CAPT. EDWARD B. CUTLER, who was a valiant officer in the Union Army during  the late war. has since attained a leading place among the most progressive and enlightened farmers and stock-raisers of this county and the land that he purchased in Penn Township when he came here nearly twenty years ago has been developed by him into one of the choicest farms in this part of the State in point of cultivation and improvement.

Captain Cutler was born in the town of Jay, Essex County. N. Y.. July 11, 1822. His father, Thomas Cutler, was also a native of that county, of which his father, John Cutler, was an early settler. The latter was born in New England and was a descendant of early English ancestry that had settled in that part of the county in Colonial times. After his removal to Essex County, N.J., he bought a tract of timberland in Jay and at once commenced to clear it and prepare it for cultivation. He was drowned while attempting to cross the Au Sable River in 1830. He was a soldier in the Revolutionary War.

The father of our subject grew to man’s estate in his native county and was there married to Jane Steele, a native of Moore’s Hill, N.H. In 1828 the parents of our subject removed to the wilds of St. Lawrence County, N. Y., and settled in the town of Willney, two miles south of Hoovelton, where the father bought timbered land, upon which he erected a log house for a dwelling. At that time that county was but thinly inhabited and bears were frequently seen by the settlers, while deer and other game was plentiful and helped to vary the meager fare of the people, who had to live on their farm products. The women clothed their children in homespun that was the result of their own handiwork.

Mr. Cutler cleared quite a tract of his land and resided on it until the fall of 1839, when he became the pioneer of another state. Accompanied by his family he started with a team for Watertown. whence he went by boat to Rochester, from there by canal to Buffalo, thence on Lake Erie to Cleveland, from there to Portsmouth, Ohio, where he embarked on a steamer on the Ohio River and was
conveyed to his final destination at Lawrenceburg. He farmed there two years and then proceeded on a flat-boat down the Ohio to Louisville and from there to Troy. Ind.. where he bought a tract of heavily wooded land eight miles from the Ohio River.
The surrounding country was still in a wild condition, as there were not then many settlements there, and deer, wild turkeys and other kinds of game roamed at will where are now smiling farms and evidences of thrift and plenty on every hand. The father built a home, but his life was not spared long after he took possession of it, as his career was cut short by his untimely death in 1842. His wife also died on that farm in Perry County. She was the mother of these five children: James M., Catherine, Abigail, Thomas and Edward. Edward and Abigail are the only survivors of the family.