Brother Joseph was born Ira S. Dutton in Stowe, Vermont, and came to Wisconsin as a child. He served with the 13th Infantry during the Civil War, mostly tending the sick and burying the dead. Afterwards, he stayed in the South tracing missing soldiers, collecting their remains, and settling survivors' claims. These horrors and a failed marriage led him into alcoholism, and by his own account he spent the next decade in a drunken stupor. When he emerged from the gutter in 1876, he began to study religion and in 1883 joined the Trappist Monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky. After hearing about the work of Fr. Damien De Veuster ("Damien the Leper") in 1886, Dutton made his way to Hawaii, where he introduced himself as "Brother Joseph" and joined the tiny relief corps at Damien's colony of exiled native Hawaiian lepers. He remained there as a lay brother until his death in 1931, building latrines, bandaging sores, cleaning clinics, and serving meals to the diseased and despised. Brother Joseph Dutton accepted no pay and directed that his military pension be given to the monks at Gethsemane. [Sources: Stewart, Richard. Leper Priest of Moloka'i (Univ. of Hawai'i Press, 2000); Capital Times, March 26, 1931]Stewart, Richard. Leper Priest of Moloka'i (Univ. of Hawai'i Press, 2000); Capital Times, March 26, 1931.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]