Manasseh Cutler

Manasseh Cutler (May 13, 1742 – July 28, 1823) was an American Congregational clergyman involved in the American Revolutionary War. He was influential in the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and wrote the section prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory. Cutler was also a member of the United States House of Representatives. Cutler is "rightly entitled to be called 'The Father of Ohio University.'" Biography Cutler was born in Killingly in the Connecticut Colony. In 1765, he graduated from Yale College and after being a school teacher in Dedham and a merchant – and occasionally appearing in court as a lawyer – he decided to enter the ministry. He married Mary Balch within a year of graduating from Yale. Mary's sister, Hannah, married Jabez Chickering, making Cutler the uncle of their son, also named Jabez Chickering. Cutler studied under Mary's father, Thomas Balch, the minister at Dedham's Second Parish Church, for the ministry. From 1771 until his death, he was pastor of the Congregational church in what was the parish of Ipswich, Massachusetts until 1793, now Hamilton. For a few months in 1776, he was chaplain to the 11th Massachusetts Regiment commanded by Colonel Ebenezer Francis, raised for the defense of Boston. In 1778, he became chaplain to General Jonathan Titcomb's brigade and took part in General John Sullivan's expedition to Rhode Island. Soon after his return from this expedition he trained in medicine to supplement the scanty income of a minister. In 1782, he established a private boarding school, directing it for nearly a quarter of a century. In 1784 a geological party, headed by Manasseh Cutler, named the highest peak in the northeast Mount Washington. In 1786, Cutler became interested in the settlement of western lands by American pioneers to the Northwest Territory. On March 1, 1786, Cutler attended a meeting at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern with Putnam, Benjamin Tupper, and Samuel Holden Parsons to form the Ohio Company of Associates, which led to a contract being drawn up, later approved by the Confederation Congress, that sold about five percent of what was to become the State of Ohio to this group of Revolutionary War Veterans. Provisions of the contract included setting aside two townships in the center of the purchase for a university; these "College Lands" are in Appalachia.