Sutton, John

In the seventeenth century, an influx of Quakers migrated to Virginia to escape persecution in Massachusetts. Many Quaker members of the Sutton family settled in northern Virginia; as a result, there were potentially two John Suttons with similar religious backgrounds living in the area during the post-revolutionary period. The John Sutton who appears in the Mason family manuscript account book was most likely born to John Sutton and Ann Creighton on 13 April 1740 in Devon, England. 

John Sutton lived in Alexandria, Virginia, as early as 1775, since he served during the Revolutionary War as a sergeant of the 1st Virginia Regiment. During the war, Sutton successfully petitioned the Virginia assembly to recover the confiscated Alexandria property of his loyalist uncle. Sutton served the United States until September 1779 and then returned to England, most likely to reunite with his wife and two sons. By 25 October 1783, Sutton, his wife Catharine, and three sons were back in Alexandria.  

The Sutton family practiced Quakerism and John regularly attended the Quaker Quarterly Meetings held in Loudoun County. Like many Quakers in northern Virginia, Sutton was a merchant. John Sutton and Company sold produce and general goods such as riding saddles. Sutton also owned properties in Alexandria and in the Virginia counties of Loudoun, Fairfax, Braxton, Monongalia, and Shenandoah. 

Sutton’s business ventures included a partnership with John Mandeville in the 1780s. Collectively, the two shared properties and land in areas such as Alexandria, Hampshire, and Fairfax. In 1785, Elisha C. Dick threatened litigation against John Mandeville and John Sutton for attempting to sell at auction 44,000 acres of land in Hampshire County that Dick claimed was obtained fraudulently. On 17 July 1790, Mandeville appointed Sutton as power of attorney in order to pay their creditors in England. This decision would later become a catalyst for their deteriorating professional relationship. 

Although some sources claim that John Sutton returned to England permanently in 1790, Sutton’s removal from the Loudoun County Society of Friends in 1795 is the earliest verifiable evidence of his departure. In 1798, Sutton returned to Alexandria to sign land patents for his son and to respond to John Mandeville’s announcement of bankruptcy. In the following years, Sutton’s shared property was auctioned off, and he sued Mandeville for $40,000 in damages. In 1801, the Loudoun County Society of Friends disowned Sutton for emigrating without satisfying his debts in England. 

Sutton wrote two letters to President Thomas Jefferson, whom he had never met, seeking government jobs for himself in 1801 and for his son, Daniel, in 1807. In his 1807 letter, Sutton enclosed a letter of support from John T. Mason (also a fervent Democratic-Republican), who described John Sutton as “an Old quaker with whom I have been long intimate.”  

In 1805, Sutton won election to Alexandria’s Common Council, where he served until approximately 1810.  He later moved to Braxton County (now in West Virginia), where he died in 1825. 

by Brandan Culbert