Section 33:  Thomas Sutton & Family

Sutton became a prosperous man -- bought the two lots east of the Presbyterian Church and erected a brick house and brick office thereon. They had a beautiful little daughter, their first child. At the age of three or four years she died of scarlet fever. They also had a little boy and a younger daughter. The family were among the best in town. He was a useful member and elder of our church, a successful, popular member of the bar; he was naturally a cheerful, jovial companion and he and his wife did much to give tone to the social intercourse of the town. So far as drink was concerned, he was strictly temperate, but he was a free liver, fond of highly seasoned food and late suppers and had a tendency to grow corpulent; but he had pretty good health and continued growing as a lawyer till the winter of 1853 he began to fail and in March of that year he took some kind of a gastric fever and after lingering a week or two died at the age of thirty-seven -- universally regretted, and I lost the most intimate friend I ever had in Clarion.

While he lay sick his little boy took the fever and died a day or two before his father, and I attended the funeral of both within three days of each other. His brothers, John and James Sutton and one of their sisters came over to the funeral and Mrs. Sutton in her desolation accompanied them back to Indiana with her remaining child, but it had caught the contagion too and took sick after they got there and in about a week she died and they brought her back and buried her beside her father and brother and sister, and all but the mother sleep in our graveyard.

Mrs. Sutton remained in town several years after the death of her family but subsequently sold her property and removed from town. H. A. Thompson and wife were her most intimate friends. They removed back to Indiana where they had formerly lived. In the removal and breaking up of these two families, our church sustained a great loss. They were both ruling elders. Since that we have lost by removal Thompson, Moffitt and John P. Greer and others, and still our church lives and is supported by about the usual number of members. Mrs. Sutton is living in Philadelphia, in charge of a select school.