Cutler the younger was the real benefactor of OU

In any discussion of the Founding Fathers of Ohio University, the name of Manasseh Cutler probably looms larger than that of anyone but Rufus Putnam.

According to a retired OU professor whose family has ties to the Cutlers, however, Manasseh's oldest son Ephraim (1767-1853) was actually far more of a benefactor than his father to both the university and the region, and has been unfairly neglected by historians.

Ephraim "probably did more to keep the university afloat and alive than Manasseh Cutler ever did," claims Richard Dean, an emeritus professor of hearing, speech and language sciences.

Dean, whose family roots are in Athens County, said he was fascinated when, in the course of genealogical research on his own kin, he learned that Ephraim Cutler had spent a fair amount of his life in what is now Amesville.

"I was deeply intrigued, and still am intrigued," he recalled. "I started reading 'Life and Times of Ephraim Cutler,' which is the only book there is that's about him. And it's absolutely fascinating."

The 1890 book, by Julia Perkins Cutler and Ephraim Cutler Dawes, is available in its entirety online.

Dean became so interested in Cutler's life, in fact, that in 1999, he began staging dramatic re-enactments of Cutler's life. When he gives these re-enactments for students, community groups and others, he portrays Cutler as a 70-year-old man, dresses in period costume, and speaks in a Massachusetts dialect.

Having grown up in Amesville, Dean knew from a young age that Cutler had played some kind of role in the early days of the village, and helped create the famed Coonskin Library.

When he began researching his own family roots, however, he "came more frequently in contact with information related to Judge Cutler's role in the courts of early Southeastern Ohio," according to Dean's Cutler Web site. "(I) eventually became convinced that Ephraim Cutler had had significant and major influences on Early Ohio, but that he was largely unknown to Ohioans, particularly Southeastern Ohioans."

For example, the site notes that Cutler wrote a state law in 1825, providing for the funding of public education through property tax, and is also thought to have played a major role in establishing the Underground Railroad in Ohio.

Born in Massachusetts, Cutler died near Belpre, Ohio. During his lifetime, he was a personal acquaintance of George Washington; a judge; a writer and signer of Ohio's constitution; a state legislator (the youngest in the territorial legislature before statehood); and a trustee and major supporter of the fledgling OU.

Coming west to Ohio by covered wagon and flatboat as a merchant in 1795, Cutler apparently started out in real estate and ended up in the law. He seems to have been more directly involved in the creation of OU than his dad, who tends to be far better known in this connection.

Though Manasseh wrote the original OU charter (back then, it was called the American Western University), it was his son who presented it to the Legislature, and Manasseh never came to Ohio after making one brief visit to Marietta in 1788.

Ephraim, on the other hand, served 30 years on the OU Trustee board, and according to Dean, never missed a meeting. He also held court in the Silas Bingham House (now OU's visitor center on Richland Avenue) when it was the first Athens County Courthouse.

So why don't people know more about Ephraim? "Probably because they don't know history," Dean speculated. "And because Manasseh Cutler is up there as a person who was affiliated with the Ohio Company (a famous land speculation firm) and the Northwest Ordinance."

Ironically, Dean noted, some correspondence of Manasseh Cutler's even suggests the old man got a little disenchanted with OU after helping found it.

In one surviving letter he's seen, Dean said, Manasseh "wrote, 'Frankly, I must admit, my feelings have been very, very hurt. I really am not much interested in that university. You would think they could name something after me.'... Oh, he was very disappointed."

If Manasseh Cutler (1742-1823) had lived until the age of 172, he would have finally seen his name placed on the university's most prominent building.

Cutler Hall, where OU's president and senior administrators work, was renamed in honor of Manasseh Cutler in 1914. Work on the building, which according to OU's Web site is the oldest building erected for higher education west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River, began in 1816 and was completed in 1819.