William Hampden Dutton, generally known as Hampden Dutton, was a pioneering pastoralist in New South Wales and South Australia.
History
Hampden was the eldest child of Frederick Hugh Hampden Dutton and his wife Mary Ann Dutton, née Pollock. His father, whose surname was originally Mendes, was for some time British consul at Cuxhaven, Hanover, where Hampden and most if not all of his siblings were born. Hampden studied agricultural science in Germany from around 1822 to 1824, specialising in wool classing and sheep breeding. He was employed by the Australian Agricultural Company in 1825 to select a flock and arrived in Sydney on 22 March 1826 with a selection of around 240 sheep, though many were in poor condition and so many died subsequently that Hampden's contract was terminated. He returned to England in 1827. In 1830 Hampden and his brother Frederick Hansborough Dutton returned to Sydney. Frederick moved to Mullengandra near Albury, while Hampden had extensive properties in Monaro region of New South Wales. He was appointed Magistrate at Yass in 1834, Justice of the Peace in Sydney. On 26 December 1838 Hampden, his wife Charlotte, and three children arrived in South Australia from Sydney aboard the ship Parland, which also carried for him a full cargo of 1,500 sheep and a number of horses. He was in 1939, with fellow Sydney pastoralists Moore and Duncan Macfarlane, granted a selection of from South Australia's first "Special Survey" of of land in South Australia, near Mount Barker ; He shortly returned to Sydney. He, Macfarlane, and Capt. John Finnis, who were by then the three partners, organised three overland sheep drives from Sydney to Adelaide over the next few years. He was consul or vice-consul at Sydney for Hanse Towns from 1840 to 1842, then was declared insolvent, and his business affairs were put in the hands of his brother Frederick, who paid out all creditors in full. He died four years later in Melbourne, Victoria. His eldest son William Broughton Dutton died in North Adelaide in 1863; his widow sold by auction some 64 blocks in the township of Mount Barker in 1866, and the family either returned to, or had remained in South Australia, later living at Strangways Terrace, North Adelaide. Both Hampden Road and Dutton Place in Mount Barker are named after him.
Family
William Hampden Dutton married Charlotte da Silva Cameron on 2 July 1831. Charlotte was a daughter of Charles Cameron and stepdaughter of Captain John Finnis. Their children included:
