CUTLER, MANASSEH (1742-1823), American clergy man, was born in Killingly, Conn., on May 13, 1742. He graduated at Yale college in 1765, and after being a school teacher and a merchant, and occasionally appearing in the courts as a lawyer, he decided to enter the ministry. From in' he was pastor of the Congregational church at what is now Hamilton, Massachusetts. In the American Revolution he served as chaplain, thereafter sup plementing his ministry by the practice of medicine and the con duct of a private boarding-school. In 1786 he became interested in the settlement of Western lands, and in the following year, as agent of the Ohio Company (q.v.), which he had taken a prominent part in organizing, he made a contract with Congress whereby his associates, former soldiers in the Revolutionary War and business men, might purchase r,5oo,000ac. of land in the region north of the Ohio at the mouth of the Muskingum river. He also took a leading part in drafting the famous Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the North-west Territory. From 18oi to 1805 he was a Federalist representative in Congress. A versatile man, Cutler conducted painstaking astronomical and meteorologi cal investigations, and made researches of scientific value in botany. He died in Hamilton, Mass., July 28, 1823.
See W. P. and Julia P. Cutler, The Life, Journals, and Correspond ence of Manasseh Cutler (1888) ; and Records of the Original Pro ceedings of the Ohio Company, ed. A. B. Hulbert ("Marietta College Hist. Coll." vol. i.—li., 1917) .