Author: Hutton, Joseph
Biography:
HUTTON, Joseph (1787-1828: Kettell)
He was a native of Philadelphia, born there on 25 Feb. 1787--but the reliable records do not name his parents. He had some schooling, then went to work in a store and started contributing poetry to periodicals. His first independent publications were romances. He wrote his first work for the theatre in 1808 and continued to produce comedies, afterpieces, and melodramas well into the 1820s. He established a school in order to support a wife and daughter (their names are not known): the New American Reader that he edited in 1813 was a byproduct of that work. In 1822 he took to the stage as an actor himself, performing in Philadelphia and then in "southern and western states" (Kettell). In 1823 the Huttons moved to Newbern (or New Bern) NC, where again he taught school and wrote two more plays, a farce or "melo drama" entitled The Falls of Niagara and a tragedy on the murder of Col. Sharp of Kentucky, both of which remained unpublished in manuscript at the time of his death at Newbern on 31 Jan. 1828. His funeral, according to the local press, was "attended with masonic honours." (Kettell; Oxford Companion to American Theatre [3rd edn. 2004]; findmypast.com 11 Sept. 2025; Newbern Sentinel 2 Feb. 1828, 8 Mar. 1828) HJ