Ira Dutton was a Catholic lay missionary at the leper settlement of Kalaupapa, Molokai Island, Hawaii. Dutton, born in Stowe, Vermont, served as a lieutenant in the Union Army during the Civil War, and later as a claims adjuster for the War Department. He married shortly after the war, his wife deserting him within a year and leaving him in a state of drunken dissipation. In 1883, on his fortieth birthday, he was baptized into the Catholic faith.

He spent two years as an oblate at the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. In 1886 he learned of the work of Father Damien de Veuster, SS.CC., with the lepers of Kalaupapa and decided that a life of service there would be a suitable means of penance for his years of dissipation. Dutton arrived on the island in 1886, working with Father Damien until Damien's death in 1889, and remaining on the island until the time of his own death in 1931.