Bloodgood Cutter

Cutter was born August 5, 1817, the son of Mary Bloodgood Haviland and Richard Cutter.{{cite book |last=Frost |first=Josephine C. |date=1914 |title=The Haviland Genealogy : Ancestors and Descendants of William Haviland of Newport, Rhode Island, and Flushing, Long Island, 1653-1688 : with special records of the allied families of Field, Hull, Torrey, Willett-Willis |url=https://archive.org/details/havilandgenealog00fros |location=New York, NY |publisher=The Lyons Genealogical Co. |page=220 }} He was raised primarily by his stepfather's uncle, Roe Haviland (who Cutter referred to as "Grandfather Haviland"), and left school at sixteen to work on one of Roe's schooners, continuing his own education through reading the Bible.{{cite web|url=https://qns.com/2002/03/our-history-l-i-farmer-poet-voyages-with-mark-twain/ |title=Our History: L.I. 'Farmer Poet' voyages with Mark Twain |author=Joan Brown Wettingfeld |date=14 March 2002|website=QNS |access-date=28 October 2020}}

In 1840 he eloped with Emeline Allen,{{cite web|url=https://qns.com/2002/03/our-history-l-i-farmer-poet-voyages-with-mark-twain/ |title=Our History: L.I. 'Farmer Poet' voyages with Mark Twain |author=Joan Brown Wettingfeld |date=14 March 2002|website=QNS |access-date=28 October 2020}} a member of the well-propertied Allen family of Great Neck, NY. He later acquired the Allen mill, which thereafter was called Cutter's Mill (and after which Cutter Mill Road in Great Neck is named).{{cite web|url=https://greatnecklibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/thisisgreatneck.pdf |title=This is Great Neck|date=1975 |website=Great Neck Library |access-date=28 October 2020}} His main occupation was farming, but Cutter was also a propertied landowner, eventually acquiring numerous parcels in Great Neck as well as large blocks of land north of the railroad station there, and across Manhasset Bay in what is now Plandome Heights, where he lived in a twenty-room home towards the end of his life.{{cite news |author=Miller Hageman |title=At Bloodgood Cutter's |url=https://bklyn.newspapers.com/image/60735338/?terms=%22emeline%20allen%22&match=1 |work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle |location=Brooklyn, New York |date=20 April 1890|access-date=28 October 2020}} During the course of his business dealings he developed a reputation for honesty and sound business acumen.{{cite web|url=https://www.plandomeheights-ny.gov/Attachments/A%20History%20of%20the%20Incorporated%20Village.htm |title=A History of the Incorporated Village of Plandome Heights |author=Arlene Hinkemeyer & Eleanor M. Imperato |website=Village of Plandome Heights |access-date=28 October 2020}}

File:The Innocents Abroad, p. 091.jpg

Cutter also developed a reputation as a "character" for his old-fashioned clothes, his country accent, and the poetry that he wrote and distributed for various events.{{cite web|url=https://www.plandomeheights-ny.gov/Attachments/A%20History%20of%20the%20Incorporated%20Village.htm |title=A History of the Incorporated Village of Plandome Heights |author=Arlene Hinkemeyer & Eleanor M. Imperato |website=Village of Plandome Heights |access-date=28 October 2020}} A stanza of a poem Cutter wrote for the second centennial anniversary of Glen Cove, Long Island reads:

{{quote|"Oysters and clams grow on your shore,
You have them brought fresh to your door;
Then they are a delicious treat;
But canned they're hardly fit to eat."{{cite book |last=Scudder |first=Henry J. |date=May 25, 1868 |title=An address delivered at Glen Cove, L.I.: at the celebration of the second centennial anniversary of the settlement of that village |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100765911 |location=Glen Cove, Long Island |page=54 }}}}

In 1867 Cutter booked passage for a five-month trip aboard the Quaker City. Mark Twain turned out to be one of the other passengers, and Cutter found himself immortalized in Twain's book Innocents Abroad as the character the "Poet Lariat." This is how Mark Twain described Cutter in his notes for the book:

{{quote| "He is fifty years old, and small of his age. He dresses in homespun, and is a simple-minded, honest, old-fashioned farmer, with a strange proclivity for writing rhymes. He writes them on all possible subjects, and gets them printed on slips of paper, with his portrait at the head. These he will give to any man that comes along, whether he has anything against him or not..."{{cite book |last=Paine |first=Albert Bigelow |date=1912 |title=Mark Twain, a biography: the personal and literary life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012263121 |location=New York, NY |publisher=Harper & Brothers |page=330 }}}}

In 1886 Cutter self-published a collection of his poems titled The Long Island Farmer's Poems,{{cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3157728 |title=The Long Island farmer's poems : lines written on the "Quaker City" excursion to Palestine, and other poems |author=Bloodgood H. Cutter |via=Worldcat |oclc=3157728 |access-date=28 October 2020}} which included an autographed picture of Mark Twain as well as a mention of being Twain's Poet Lariat on the title page.{{cite news |author=William Grimes |title=A Poet Without Honor in His Own County; Queens's Answer to Whitman Never Attained the Eminence of Brooklyn's Bard |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/11/nyregion/poet-without-honor-his-own-county-queens-s-answer-whitman-never-attained.html |work=The New York Times |location=New York City |date=11 August 1995 |access-date=28 October 2020}}

Cutter died in 1906 at the age of 89. A tall granite gravestone marks his burial site in the cemetery of the Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, Queens, to which he had once made a sizable donation.{{cite news |author= |title=Generous as Well as Poetic|url=https://bklyn.newspapers.com/image/53925853/?terms=%22bloodgood%20h.%20cutter%22&match=1 |work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle |location=Brooklyn, New York |date=24 April 1903 |access-date=28 October 2020}} His residuary estate, valued at nearly $500,000, was willed to the American Bible Society.{{cite news |author= |title=Kin of Poet Cutter May Try to Break Will |url=https://bklyn.newspapers.com/image/53912811/?terms=%22bloodgood%20h.%20cutter%22&match=1 |work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle |location=Brooklyn, New York |date=10 October 1906 |access-date=28 October 2020}} His vast collection of books, antiques, art, travel mementoes and various other items (including "as hot a bunch of waistcoats as ever appeared on Broadway") was sold at auction.{{cite news |author= |title=Poet Cutter's Curios to be Auctioned Off |url=https://bklyn.newspapers.com/image/57652365/?terms=%22bloodgood%20h.%20cutter%22&match=1 |work=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle |location=Brooklyn, New York |date=27 July 1907 |access-date=28 October 2020}}

• "Poetical lecture, suggested after seeing the model of Solomon's temple." L.I. Times Office, 1860. 20 pages.
• "Long Island farmer on congressmen." Little Neck, N.Y., 1860. 1 page.
• "Long Island farmer, musing on a wheel-barrow, while waiting for his neighbor to turn out." Little Neck, N.Y., 1861. 1 page.
• "Eulogy on General Scott." Little Neck, L.I., 1861. 8 pages.
• "A poem on the New England kitchen." Little Neck, L.I., 1864. 8 pages.
• "Long Island farmer to the memory of John A. Van Nostrand, known as "Jack," in Mark Twain's Innocents' abroad." Little Neck, N.Y., 1879. 1 page.
• "Lines on the Egyptian obelisk 'Cleopatra's Needle.'" Flushing, N.Y., W. R. Burling, Printer, 1881. 8 pages.
• "The Long Island farmer's poems: lines written on the "Quaker City" excursion to Palestine, and other poems." New York, N. Tibbals & sons (published for the author). 1886. 499 pages.
• "Long Island farmer on the burning of his mill, on the morning of December, and its history." Little Neck, N.Y., 1889. 1 page.
• "Poems." Berkeley, Calif. Hart Press, 1948. 1 page.

{{Reflist}}

• Long Island Genealogy's page on Bloodgood Cutter [http://www.longislandgenealogy.com/BloodgoodCutter.html]
• The Douglaston/Little Neck Historical Society's page on Bloodgood Cutter [https://web.archive.org/web/20040702092534/http://www.dlnhs.org/douglastonhill/dhresidentsCutter.cfm]
• Bloodgood Cutter's digitized poems in Brown University's Harris Broadsides collection.[https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/collections/id_618/?selected_facets=mods_role_creator_ssim%3ACutter%2C+Bloodgood+H.+%28Bloodgood+Haviland%29&view=gallery]

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Category:1817 births

Category:American businesspeople in real estate

Category:American male poets

Category:1906 deaths

Category:People from Great Neck, New York

Category:People from North Hempstead, New York

Category:19th-century American poets

Category:19th-century American male writers

Category:19th-century American businesspeople