 Hutchinson soon gained employ in the administration of the settlement, becoming an overseer of government livestock.In June 1801, he married his first wife Mary Cooper (also known as Mary Chapman), a convict who had been transported from Surrey, arriving on Norfolk Island in 1798; together they would have eight children, six of them born on Norfolk Island.In June 1803 he was appointed an acting superintendent of convicts on the island, and in 1805 he officially became an emancipist.