Sutton is a small farming settlement on the Strath-Taieri plain, forty-four miles from Dunedin on the Otago Central railway. Among the earliest residents of the district were Mr. Sutton—after whom the place is named—and Messrs James Gilbert, William Dow, Patrick Spratt, Michael Egan, and Michael Moynihan. Most of the plain and of the surrounding hills was originally covered with native bush, of which small patches still remain. The district is divided into small farms, and much of the land is of good productive quality. A Government settlement has also been established, with holdings of about twenty five acres. Here the settlers carry on dairying, and since the establishment of a creamery at Middlemarch they have been very successful. There is a post office and a public school at Sutton, and Presbyterian church services are held in the schoolhouse.

Gilbert, James , Farmer, Gowrie Bend Farm, Sutton. Mr. Gilbert was born in 1847, at Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland, where he was brought up to farming. He arrived in Australia in 1866, by the ship “Champion of the Seas,” and four years later came to New Zealand by the s.s. “Tararua.” He worked at the Taieri for a time, and afterwards went to Strath-Taieri with Mr. E. W. Humphreys. Early in the seventies Hr. Gilbert acquired his present fine property at Sutton, comprising 230 acres, which he devotes to mixed farming. The land was then in its native state, but it is now thoroughly cultivated, and a house and farm buildings have been erected by the proprietor, who has also planted every tree on his farm. Mr Gilbert has served on the Sutton school committee since 1897, and is a member of the Otago Agricultural and Pastoral Association, and also of the Strath-Taieri Agricultural and Pastoral Association.