John Utton Colfax County, New Mexico

John Utton, postmaster of Bell, Colfax County, New Mexico, has been identified with this locality for a period of twenty years. Mr. Utton is an Englishman by birth. He was born in Oxfordshire, April 23, 1857, and spent the first twenty-two years of his life in his native country. In 1879 he came to the United States, and that year located near Pittsburg, where he engaged in coal mining for three years. In 1882 he returned to England, but after eighteen months he came back to America and again sought the mines in Pennsylvania. Six months later we find him in Pana, Illinois. The next two years he spent there and in various other places, and finally, in 1886, he came to New Mexico. Here for six months he worked in the mines of Blossburg. Then he took claim to a tract of land on Johnson's mesa, and for several years devoted his summers to the improvement and cultivation of his land, and the winter months he spent in Blossburg mines. With the exception of three months in 1894, when he was in Utah, Mr. Utton has continued to reside on his homestead, which now comprises three hundred and twenty acres of land, and on which he raises a variety of crops, chiefly oats, wheat, barley and potatoes. Also he has a small general store, the only one on the mesa, in connection with which he keeps the post office, he having been appointed postmaster of Bell in 1903.

Politically Mr. Utton is a Republican. He was initiated into the mysteries of the Knights of Pythias order while at Blossburg, and now has membership in the lodge at Raton. June 19, 1901 he married Miss Lulu T. English, daughter of C. A. English, an old settler of the mesa, and they have two children, Thomas Clyde and Annie Clair. Mrs. Utton is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

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Source: History of New Mexico, Its Resources and People, Volume II, Pacific States Publishing Co., 1907.