John Rutter was born in Bristol on the 10th of April 1796 and was the youngest of seven children. In July 1818 he married the daughter of a Quaker draper. That same year he published his first pamphlet, summarising the history of a piece of countryside south-east of Shaftesbury. Delineations of the North Western Division of the County of Somerset was first published in 1829 and was the result of two excursions Rutter made in 1828.