Ashland, Va.

April 12, 1951

Dear Mrs. Abels:

      It has been some time since I last wrote either you or your Brother.  Since last writing I have not been idle and have accumulated a lot of material for the Hutt Family History.

      One thing that I recently received from Mrs. Charles Pfeiffer was a transcript copy of the Bible which belonged to John Hutt and which was recorded in his handwriting.  In this he gave the dates of birth of both of his parents and the date of marriage as well as saying that both of his parents were born in Westmoreland County, Virginia.  Now this seems to settle the matter that they were born in Virginia as I have maintained all along.  You remember your aunt, Mrs. Swayne, had said that they or rather Gerard Hutt was born in England and had a brother in Parliament and that his wife, Caty Spence, was born in Scotland.  I felt that your Aunt had tradition mixed up somewhat as so often happens with a tradition that is handed down by word of mouth.  I felt sure that Gerard Hutt was born in Virginia unless his father had gone back to England and his son was born in Virginia there, which could have happened.  But as I began to dig into the Court Records in Westmoreland Co. here in the State Archives I found a lot of records relative to Daniel Hutt the immigrant ancestor of the Hutts in Virginia.  Now Daniel Hutt was in truth born in England, and he spent about 20 years as a merchant mariner and was a captain of a vessel called "Mayflower" which he sailed between Virginia, Boston, the Barbadoes and England.  I have various records bearing dates from those various places showing that he was there at different times doing business as a merchant mariner.

      Then in 1669 Daniel Hutt came to America as a passenger on a ship and married and settled down on the land that he had patented during these years of trading.  He wrote his will in 1673 and died shortly afterwards leaving only a son and daughter, both under four years old.  In his will which I found in the Records after much searching through an unindexed book, he names his Brother John Hutt of London, England to whom he leaves his estate in case his two children should die without issue.  So it must be this Hutt who was in Parliament.  There was no John Hutt in the first two generations born in Virginia.  There was a John Hutt in the third generation, and then two in the fourth generation who were first cousins.

      I was at a loss for a long time to know who was the mother of your ancestor John Hutt of the Revolution.  Then I got the information from you or your Brother and again from several other sources that she was Caty Spence.  I had guessed that her name might be Spence from certain circumstantial evidence of names in the Family.  So I began to look through Spence Records to see if I could find the facts there.  But no one has ever worked out the Spence Genealogy that I know about and I struck rather rough going, but then when I learned that Spence was the correct name I continued my work on the Spence Family and not so long ago I found Caty Spence I the records.  Her father had not left a will and so when I found a deed in which her father left all of his estate to his wife and children I felt quite lucky.  He seems to have deeded everything to his family and not to have made a will at all.

      Now I have the whole Spence Family going back to about 1639 when the first of the family came to Maryland.  I have it all with the exception of the maiden name of the wife of the immigrant ancestor and the name of the wife of Caty Spence's grandfather.

      Recently I found the name of the wife of the First Gerard Hutt to be Ann Jackson, now I do not know the name of Mary the wife of the second Gerard Hutt.  Hers is the only maiden name that I lack in the Hutt line from the beginning.  I have hopes of running into that any time as it is remarkable how things fall into place as one accumulates a lot of data.

      During the past few months I have been working on land transactions, that is deeds wherein the Hutts sold and bought land and through these it is often easy to trace the family lines as they tell so much about the inheritance of the land, often naming ancestors, and giving dates that establish relationships.

      According to the Bible record of your great grandfather, John Hutt, in which he gives the names of his sister and brothers he does not name a sister Ursula at all unless her name was omitted from the transcript which I received.  I do have her name and birth date sent to me by a descendant of Nimrod Hutt, a brother to John Hutt.  The Book in which the will of Gerard Hutt was recorded has been lost so I can not refer to that and nowhere in any of the deeds relative to the family where all of the others are listed is Ursula mentioned.

      This Ursula you will recall is the mother of your grandfather, John James Robinson.  She married first Solomon J. Robinson and secondly George Rust with whom she and her two Robinson children went to Ohio.  I have a power of attorney from John James Robinson whereby he was selling land in Westmoreland which he inherited from his father, Solomon Robinson, and which he also bought the widows dower from his mother, Ursula P. Rust.

      Your Grandfather had a sister whose name was Nancy Spence Robsinson and she married Jeremiah Action in Ohio and she seems to have had three daughters living with her at the time of the 1850 census.  Since these Acton children would have been first cousins to your Father, and their children your second cousins I wonder if you know any thing about them or how I might get in touch with any of them?

      By the way can you suggest how I got the idea that you lived in Eudora?  For some time now I have been thinking about you as living in Eudora and told Mrs. Pfeiffer that was your address and I fear upset her with my insisting on it.  I can not see where I got that idea, but it came from somewhere.  I see by the map that Eudpra is a small place near Lawrence.  Perhaps you mailed a letter from there and I got the idea from the postmark on the envelope.

      Did you ever know anything about any of the descendants of William Spence Hutt?  He was a brother of John Hutt.  I know that there was a lot of descendants at one time living in Arkansas and some of them seem to have lived in Oregon.  I have not been able to locate anything about them except what I can find in various historical accounts of Arkansas, and other places.

      Recently while working on the Deeds in relationship to Hutt and Spence I have come across a lot of Robinson records and I have been trying to collect these as I go as they might be helpful in your Robinson Family line back of Solomon Robinson, the father of John James Robinson.  The Family relationships in Westmoreland County are complex.  There are so many half blood relations and then inlaw relationships where there are step children that it is hard to untangle the whole matter.

Sincerely yours,

Thomas F. Martin