Richard S. "Hutch" Hutchinson
Richard Hutchinson, a.k.a. "Hutch", was raised in Hightstown, NJ, and upon graduation entered the US Navy. Upon discharge, he returned to Hightstown, worked for seven years as a sheet metal mechanic and met his wife, Faye Tallman, through her brother working with him as a sheet metal mechanic. After tiring of looking at four walls, he began a 25 years career in law enforcement in 1969 as a Patrolman in Hightstown. Within a year, he moved on to East Windsor Twp. as a Patrolman and later as a Detective. After four years, he moved on as an Investigator with the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office and worked in the Trenton-Mercer County Organized Crime Strike Force and the Special Investigations Unit. He attended college at night and summer while working in the strike force, and graduated in 5 years with a Degree of Bachelor of Science, Cum Laude, in Criminal Justice. He made his final career move in 1976 and for the next 17 years, he was as a Special Agent with the NJ State Commission of Investigation - Organized Crime and Public Corruption.

In 1994, Hutchinson took early retirement and then obtained his NJ Private Investigator's license and opened his own business. He did investigative work for several law firms but specialized in finding the natural parents of adopted children and doing genealogical research for people around the country who traced their ancestors back to central New Jersey. In 1997, New Jersey real estate taxes drove him from New Jersey and he and his wife settled in southern Delaware in a little historic town called Bethel, consisting of approximately 100 people, a General Store and a one person Post Office. He and his wife have two daughters and two grandchildren.

During his law enforcement career, Dick began working in genealogy and researching the various Hutchinson families of central New Jersey as a hobby. After 35 years of research, and nearing retirement, he began self-publishing four genealogical quarterlies covering Burlington, Mercer, Middlesex and Monmouth Counties, New Jersey.

Dick Hutchinson has authored 10 books on central NJ records; including the deeds of various counties and the deaths & marriages from the Hightstown Gazette with another publisher. Since January 2005, he has associated himself with Colonial Roots, of Lewes, DE and his latest publications include a "work in progress" - a series of abstracts of the East New Jersey Deed books covering the period from the late 1600s through the mid-1700s.

Hutchinson is a member of several historical and genealogical organizations, an Associate Editor of The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey, and Co-Administrator of the worldwide Hutchinson Surname DNA Project. The results of his work in using DNA from various descendants of the three major Hutchinson lines in Central New Jersey in the early 1700s has just been published by The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey in their September 2005 issue. This study proved that the three main Hutchinson families in Colonial NJ were paternally related through a common male ancestor and were either brother or cousins or a combination of both.

He is available to groups as speaker on various historical topics dealing with his hometown of Hightstown, NJ and the East Windsor Twp. area with overhead presentations and gives historical walking tours of the "Old Village of Hightstown." He is also a speaker on the topic of using your DNA with your genealogy - "DNA & Genealogy: Perfect Together."

Richard Hutchinson with his daughter Kelly and his 1940 Plymouth