Delegates from various New England counties met at Boston, March 1, 1786. A committee, consisting of Putnam, Cutler, Colonel John Brooks, Major Winthrop Sargent, and Captain Thomas H. Cushing was appointed to draft a plan of association. Two days later they made a report, some of the most important points of which were: (1) That a stock company should be formed with a capital of one million dollars of the Continental Certificates already mentioned; (2) that this fund should be devoted to the purchase of lands northwest of the River Ohio; (3) that each share should consist of one thousand dollars of certificates, and ten dollars of gold or silver to be used in defraying expenses; (4) that directors and agents be appointed to carry out the purposes of the company.
Subscription books were opened at different places, and at the end of the year, a sufficient number of shares had been subscribed to justify further proceedings. On the eighth of March, 1787, another meeting was held in Boston, and General Samuel Holden Parsons, Putnam, Cutler and General James M. Varnum were appointed directors, and were ordered to make proposals to Congress for the purchase of lands in accordance with the plans of the company. Later, the directors employed Cutler to act as their agent and make a contract with Congress for a body of land in the “Great Western Territory of the Union.”
To those who have studied this transaction of the Ohio Company of Associates in its various bearings, there can be no doubt that through it the Ordinance of 1787 came to be. The two were intimately related parts of one whole. Either studied alone presents inexplicable difficulties; studied together each explains the other. Through the agency of Cutler the purchase of land was effected and those radical changes in the ordinance were made between the ninth and thirteenth of July, 1787.
Cutler was born at Killingly, Connecticut, May 3, 1742. At the age of twenty-three he graduated from Yale. The two years following were devoted to the whaling business and to storekeeping at Edgartown, on Martha’s Vineyard. He did not enjoy this occupation, however, and studied law in his spare time. In 1767 he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. This profession proved little more congenial, and he determined to study theology. In 1771 he was ordained at Ipswich, where he continued preaching until the outbreak of the Revolution, when he entered the army as a chaplain. In one engagement he took such an active and gallant part that the colonel of his regiment presented him with a fine horse captured from the enemy. Cutler returned to his parish before the war closed and decided to study medicine. He received his M.D. degree, and for several years served in the double capacity of minister and doctor. He was now a graduate in all the so-called learned professions—law, divinity, and medicine. In scientific pursuits he was probably the equal of any man in America, excepting Benjamin Franklin, and perhaps Benjamin Rush. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and several other learned bodies. Two years before his journey to New York, he had published four articles in the memoirs of the American Academy, dealing with astronomy, meteorology and botany. The last mentioned was the first attempt made by any one to describe scientifically the plants of New England. Employing the Linnaean system, he classified 350 species of plants found in his neighborhood. His articles brought him prominence among learned groups throughout the country, and secured for him a cordial welcome into the literary and scientific circles of New York and Philadelphia. Cutler was well fitted, therefore, to become, as has already been related, a leading spirit in the enterprise of the Ohio Company. In 1795 Washington offered him the judgeship of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territory, which he declined. He became a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, and from 1800 to 1804 served his district as its Representative in Congress. He declined re-election and returned to his pastorate. At the time of his death in 1820 he had served there for nearly 50 years.