Thomas Hatton (Hatten) was born on September 16, 1811 in England. According to The History of Winnebago County, Ill., Its Past and Present by H.F. Kett & Co. (1877), he came to America when he was quite young. He resided in New York until 1838, when he came to Chicago. He spent three or four years in Chicago, and in 1841 he arrived in Winnebago County, Illinois, where he became a successful carpenter.
Winnebago was settled in the early 1850s, when the Chicago Union (now the Chicago & Northwestern) Railroad was completed through Winnebago County. It was a center of trade, a depot from which a large amount of grain, stock, etc. was shipped to Eastern markets. The first schoolhouse was built there in 1858.
He married Angeline Williams on August 13, 1844 in Winnebago. They had seven children: Sarah (b. ci. 1847), Abigail (b. November 6, 1848), John F. (b. June 28, 1851), Thomas (b. ci. 1854), Josephine (b. August of 1860), David H (b. ci. 1861), and George Samuel (b. November 10, 1862). The family resided in Elida, Winnebago, Illinois in the 1850s, then in Rush, Jo Daviess, Illinois in the early 1860s. They returned to Winnebago in the mid 1860s, and Thomas died there in 1884 at the age of 73.
He was buried in the Townsend Cemetery in Stockton, Jo Daviess County, Illinois.