Aminta "Minty" Dutton

Life Story

Aminta Dutton, usually called Minta or Minty in contemporary records, was born about March 1788, probably in Sussex County, Delaware. Her parents were Abel Dutton and Priscilla Cade Dutton. Richardson Cade’s 1794 will identified Comfort and Aminta Dutton as the heirs of his deceased daughter Priscilla, directly connecting the girls to their mother’s Cade family.¹

Priscilla died before her father wrote that will on 7 May 1794. Abel later married Eunice, recorded as Unise in his will. When Abel made his will in August 1801, he named Minty among his daughters, together with Comfort, Susanna, and Priscilla, and also named his sons Abel, Hezekiah Truitt, and John Simpson Dutton.² Abel died before the will was proved that December, leaving Aminta a minor.

On 22 July 1802, “Minta Dutton minor Daughter of Abel Dutton” appeared before the Sussex County Orphans’ Court. The petition stated that she was fourteen years and four months old and recorded her choice of Joshua Morris as guardian. A separate petition that day identified her sister Comfort as fifteen years and eleven months old.³ Minta’s stated age points to a birth about March 1788, but it does not establish the exact day.

Their maternal grandmother Priscilla Cade wrote her will in 1805. She named “Comfort Simpson” and “Minta Dutton” together, showing that Comfort had married into the Simpson family while Minta still used her birth surname.⁴ Comfort was the first wife of Clement Simpson.

By 13 July 1812, Clement Simpson had become the guardian of “Minty Dutton minor Daughter of Abel Dutton.” The account referred back to a balance from Joshua Morris’s earlier guardianship and still recorded her under the Dutton surname.⁵ Whatever the record meant by calling Clement her “natural guardian,” he was not Minty’s father. His role probably grew from his existing connection to the Dutton family through Comfort and perhaps from Minty’s place within the Simpson household.

Aminta later became Clement Simpson’s second wife. No marriage record has been found, and the 1812 guardian account establishes that the marriage occurred after 13 July 1812. Family tradition places it in 1813, but the exact date and place should remain uncertain. The surviving evidence also does not establish precisely when Comfort died.

Clement and Aminta joined the broader Simpson movement west from Delaware. Scharf’s later account states that Clement and his brother John emigrated to Ohio in 1818.⁶ By 1830, Clement headed a household in Harrison Township, Pickaway County, Ohio. Its adult female aged thirty through thirty-nine is consistent with Aminta, then about forty-two, although the census named only Clement.⁷

Clement died before the 1840 census. In that year, a Wayne Township, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, household headed only as “Mrs. Simpson” had an age structure consistent with widowed Aminta and younger members of the Simpson family. Later records place the family in the same Indiana community, making the identification strong but still inferential.⁸

Aminta died on 24 December 1844 and was buried in Pretty Prairie Cemetery in Tippecanoe County. Her gravestone identifies her as the wife of Clement Simpson.⁹ Her children and grandchildren continued the family’s westward movement into Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska.

Documentary Evidence