Brother Joseph | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

Ira Barnes Dutton was born April 27, 1843 on a family farm in Stowe, Vermont, son of Methodist parents Ezra Dutton and Abigail Barnes. His family moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, four years later.

In 1861, he enlisted with the 13th Wisconsin Infantry and served in the Union Army during the Civil War as a quartermaster, as well as nursing the wounded and burying the dead. He was discharged in 1866 as a Captain, but stayed in the South tracing missing soldiers, collecting their remains and settling survivors’ claims.

This and a failed marriage led him into alcoholism, and by his own account he spent the next decade in a drunken stupor (“I never injured anyone but myself.”) When he emerged from the gutter in 1876, wanting to do penance for his “wild years” and “sinful capers,” he began to study religion and in 1883 joined the Trappist Monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky.

It was only after reading about Father Damien that he found his “real vocation;” he sought to help Damien on Molokai. His motive was not to hide from the world, but “to do some good for my neighbor and at the same time make it my penitentiary in doing penance for my sins and errors.” From San Francisco, he sailed for Molokai. (McNamara)

When he arrived on July 29, 1886, although he never took religious vows, he became known as “Brother Joseph” and “Brother Dutton,” “brother to everybody.” (McNamara)

His days were spent as a janitor, cleaning the primitive shelters, scrubbing floors, while also building latrines and outbuildings and bandaging sores, as well as helping Mother Marianne Cope in keeping records and organizing arriving patients. Like Mother Marianne and unlike Father Damien, he never contracted Hansen’s Disease. (Rutler)

Every day he marveled more and more at what he saw around him, bravery, he often said, greater than in the war he had been through. He enjoyed the playing of the church organist; one day he saw that one of the man’s hands was so diseased that all that was left was a stump which the organist had fastened to a stick and with which he struck the bass notes. (Burton)

Damien knew how different they were in temperament “but there is love between us,” he said. Damien had urged Dutton to become a priest; but Dutton felt unfit. “That requires a high character and great purity,” he said and he evidently felt that his early life had disqualified him. (Burton)

On Molokai, Dutton found real peace and joy. One peer recalled: “Dutton had a divine temper; nothing could ruffle it.” At 83, Joseph wrote: “I am ashamed to think that I am inclined to be jolly. Often think we don’t know that our Lord ever laughed, and here my laugh is ready to burst out any minute.” (McNamara)

He never left Molokai; he never wanted to. “Seek a vacation?” he asked. “Anything else would be slavery … The people here like me, I think, and I am sure I like them.” He added: “I would not leave my lepers for all the money the world might have.”

The one exception was in 1917, when the 74-year-old patriot tried “to buckle on my sword-belt again” and re-enlist. His application was rejected, but he wasn’t heart-broken. (McNamara)

Brother Joseph taught the children the games he had played as a child. Molokai became very proud of its baseball teams, coached and uniformed by Brother Joseph himself.

The one thing that had troubled Father Damien was what would happen to his children when he died. Now he could smile and say, “I can die now. Brother Joseph will take care of my orphans.” (Burton) (Damien came to Kalawao in 1873, he died in 1889. Brother Joseph worked with Damien for three years; he continued to serve the patients there for several more decades.)

In 1908, while the fleet of the US Navy toured the Pacific, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the ships to sail with flying colors as they passed the leper colony of Molokai in order to acknowledge the years of selfless service given by Brother Joseph. Despite such an honor, Brother Joseph’s desire was to work and pray in obscurity. (Heisey)

Still, more honors came. A bill in the Hawaiʻi Territorial legislature proposed to give Brother Joseph a $50 monthly pension for his “inspiring services;” the bill was tabled at his request and he said he “was in good health and wanted no reward for his work among the lepers.” (Arkansas Catholic, July 19, 1919) In 1929 Pope Pius XI sent his apostolic blessing. (Heisey)

On the eve of his 86th birthday, the 1929 session of the legislature adopted a resolution of appreciation of Brother Joseph Dutton’s services that briefly notes, “Resolved, that this House put on record its appreciation of the great and inspiring service and influence for good in the splendid and effective service he has rendered in their behalf during the past 40 years by Brother Joseph Dutton, in his ministration to the afflicted in Kalawao and Kalaupapa, and that the thanks of the House of Representatives be extended to him in this memorial.” (Thrum)

Brother Joseph died on March 26, 1931. Former president Calvin Coolidge in his daily syndicated newspaper column noted, “Far out in the islands of the Pacific the soul of Brother Joseph Dutton has been released from the limitations of this earth … (T)his man died a saintly world figure.”

“His faith, his works, his self-sacrifice appeal to people because there is always something of the same spirit in them. Therein lies the moral power of this world. He realized a vision which we all have. The universal response to the example of his life is another demonstration of what mankind regard as just and true and holy.”

“He showed the power of what is good and the binding force of the common brotherhood of man.” (Milwaukee Sentinel, March 29, 1931)

A couple interesting side notes relate to Brother Joseph and Stowe, Vermont. After fleeing Austria in 1938, the von Trapp family (Trapp Family Singers (of Sound of Music fame; refugees from pre-war Austria)) bought a farm in the mountains of Stowe in 1942 and made it their adopted home.

When the town was looking for a site for a new church, Maria von Trapp, the family matriarch, provided support for acquisition of land and building of the Blessed Sacrament Church (they purposefully purchased a portion of the Dutton’s former farm where Brother Joseph was born.) The first mass was held on March 6, 1949.

The church windows, walls and ceilings were painted and decorated by internationally renowned French artist Andre Girard. Twelve exterior panels depict the life of Damien and Brother Joseph at Kalawao. The church and its panels were recently restored.

In March 1952, the Trapp Family Singers visited Molokai and sang over Brother Joseph’s grave. (Yenkavitch) “Gently, Johannes placed our Mount Mansfield pine wreath at the foot of the cross. Then we began to sing. How often have I felt with deepest gratitude this great glory of our life as a singing family: that, whenever words failed to say what was taking place in our hearts, we could always express it in music.” (Maria von Trapp, The News and Tribune, January 3, 1960)

Recently, a 7-foot marble statue of Brother Joseph, depicting him as a young Civil War Union soldier, was placed at Molokai’s St. Joseph Church in Kamalo (the church Damien built;) a second statue is expected to be installed at Damien Memorial School in Honolulu (it is planned to be placed in back of the school, facing the campus’ running track.)

In 1879, Father Damien established a home at Kalawao for boys and elderly men. In 1886, Father Damien had some twenty or thirty of the patients in a little cluster of shanties and cabins scattered around his house.

Ira Barnes Dutton read about the work of Father Damien and he sought to help Damien on Molokai – “to do some good for my neighbor and at the same time make it my penitentiary in doing penance for my sins and errors.” From San Francisco, he sailed for Molokai. (McNamara)

When he arrived on July 29, 1886, although he never took religious vows, he became known as “Brother Joseph” and “Brother Dutton,” “brother to everybody.” (McNamara)

Father Damien’s home for boys at Kalawao had always been one of the most important facilities at the settlement and a project very dear to his heart. After Brother Dutton’s arrival, most of the work of the home fell to him, which consisted of providing leadership and discipline, medical treatment, and food and clothing.

“In 1887 (the Home) began to spread, and we built two houses of considerable size. This enlargement was sufficient as to capacity up to 1890 – in fact, we had to do with it until May, 1894. … It also housed some women and girls.” (Dutton)

On January 1, 1889, the Damien Home was accepted as an official reality by the Board of Health and operated as a home under the management of Father Damien.

After Damien’s death (April 15, 1889,) the Board of Health placed Mother Marianne in charge of the home, and provided a horse and carriage for the sisters to use in traveling between Kalaupapa and Kalawao. (Mother Marianne and the Sisters were operating the Charles R Bishop Home for Unprotected Leper Girls and Women that was constructed in 1888 at Kalaupapa.)

On May 22, 1889, Sisters Crescentia and Irene arrived at Kalaupapa from Kaka‘ako to help at the Boys’ Home. While the sisters generally supervised the domestic operations, such as sewing and housekeeping, Dutton was expected to be disciplinarian and leader.

He, however, concentrated mostly on keeping the accounts, attending to correspondence and general business affairs, handling the sore dressing, and attending the sick at the home and in the Kalawao hospital.

(Most of Brother Dutton’s work, however, would eventually revolve around the Baldwin Home for Boys, an enlargement of Father Damien’s Boys’ Home, and it was there that he probably made his most valuable and lasting contribution. (Greene, NPS))

By 1899, one of the chief features of Kalawao was the garden attached to the home – a banana plantation with several acres of vegetables. Vegetation at the home became quite lush through the years.

In his memoirs, Dutton described bushy masses of countless Croton plants – actually small trees – back of the garden and all around the sides. The variegated foliage gave the home the appearance of being set in a big, red bouquet.

By late spring 1890, the first official Home for Boys at Kalawao was completed. On May 15, Sister Crescentia (Directress), Sister Renata, and Sister Vincent moved into the new Convent of Our Lady of Mercy at Kalawao and assumed charge of the home.

Its purpose, decided upon in discussions among William O Smith, president of the Board of Health, Brother Dutton, and Baldwin, was to assist the men of the colony, make them comfortable, provide some recreation, and generally help them make the most out of their lives.

In 1892, funds were given to the board by Henry P Baldwin, Protestant sugar planter, financier and philanthropist of missionary stock, for the erection of four separate buildings to comprise the Baldwin Home for Leprous Boys and Men at Kalawao.

The new home was occupied during the first week of May 1894. The complex consisted of twenty-nine separate structures, most new, but some moved across the street from the grounds of St. Philomena.

In the dormitories the smaller boys were at the lower end on the right side in front of the tailor shop. Advancing up the hill, the residents increased in age and size to the recreation hall. On the other side were full grown men, gradually increasing in age so that the two lower dormitories housed the old and helpless.

From there they were moved to the house for the dead, near the church, just below the singing house. Below the two dorms for old and helpless patients was the office, containing the stock of drugs and a storage room for drugs, surplus small materials, and tools, opening into the shoe shop, saddle room, and Dutton’s bathroom.

The bathhouse and sore dressing rooms connected with the office by ten-foot-wide verandahs. The verandahs, with long benches lining the sides, were used for playing games and musical instruments and for perusing magazines and books.

Under one roof were the poi house, boiler house, beef room, pantry, and banana room. Nearby were a dining room, kitchen, woodshed and coal room, a lime and cement room, and a slop house. The storage house, for provisions and housekeeping articles, fronted on the road.

While the institution was primarily for the housing and care of boys, regulations were passed later by the Board of Health which permitted the entrance, when room was available, of older patients who desired to live there, although only males were allowed.

The Baldwin Home was to be a retreat at all times open to leprous boys and to men who, through the progress of the disease or some other cause, had become helpless.

All boys arriving at the settlement under the age of eighteen, unless in the care of their parents or guardians or near relatives who would watch over them, were to enter the home until reaching eighteen, when they could leave with permission of the superintendent.

The patients were given clothing, food, care, and medical attention, and in return were expected to work about the establishment.

By the time the home was finished, the general movement of people toward Kalaupapa had already begun. This was a slow process, actually beginning in the 1880s.

Because of the disciplinary problems involved in running a home full of active boys, it was decided that a group of strong Christian men should be put in charge.

On December 1, 1895, the Catholic sisters were relieved of duty at the home by the arrival of four Sacred Hearts brothers, who were placed under the direction of Brother Dutton. (Greene, NPS)

According to Dutton, it was not until 1902 that all the patients at Kalawao, except for those in the Baldwin Home, had moved to the other side of the peninsula. As originally built and expanded upon, the home consisted of forty-five buildings, mostly dormitories.

Buildings in the complex by the early 1930s numbered about fifty-five, including small structures such as the ash and oil houses. The brothers’ house (formerly lived in by the Catholic sisters) was the best constructed, with a fine yard in front, on the road nearly opposite the singing house (fashioned from Damien’s old two-story house).

In 1932, the ice plant and airport at Kalaupapa were completed and a new hospital opened. The old Kalaupapa general hospital was converted to the new Baldwin Home, after the old home at Kalawao burned down.

This completed the transfer of patients to the Kalaupapa side of the peninsula. In 1950, the Baldwin Home for Men and Boys merged with the Bay View Home. (Bay View Home, first established in 1901, served as a group home for older, disabled, and blind residents. Patients at Bay View shared meals in a central dining room, and received round-the-clock nursing care.)

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