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.[2] Mary's sister, Hannah, married Jabez Chickering, making Cutler the uncle of their son, also named Jabez Chickering.[3] Cutler studied under Mary's father, Thomas Balch, the minister at Dedham's Second Parish Church, for the ministry.[2] 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.[4] On March 1, 1786, Cutler attended a meeting at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern with Rufus 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.[5][6] The following year, as agent of the Ohio Company of Associates that he had been involved in creating, he organized a contract with Congress whereby his associates (former soldiers of the Revolutionary War) might purchase one and a half million acres (6,000 km2) of land at the mouth of the Muskingum River with their Certificate of Indebtedness. During the Continental Congress, Cutler took a leading part in drafting the famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwest Territory, particularly its prohibitions regarding slavery in the new territories,[7] which was finally presented to Congress by Massachusetts delegate Nathan Dane. In order to smooth passage of the Northwest Ordinance, Cutler influenced and won the votes of key congressmen by making them partners in his land company [citation needed]. By changing the office of provisional governor from an elected to an appointed position, Cutler was able to offer the position to the president of Congress, Arthur St. Clair.[8]
Cutler was friends with Benjamin Franklin, and kept detailed notes during the Constitutional Convention about his visits to Franklin's Philadelphia, Pennsylvania residence and the wonders Franklin kept there.[9] From 1801 to 1805, Cutler was a Federalist representative in Congress. Cutler was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1781.[10] Besides being proficient in the theology, law and medicine of his day, he conducted painstaking astronomical and meteorological investigations and was one of the first Americans to conduct significant botanical research. He is considered a founder of Ohio University and the National Historic LandmarkCutler Hall on that campus is named in his honor. In 1785, Cutler was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.[11] He received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Yale University in 1789. Manasseh was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1813.[12] Cutler died in 1823 at Hamilton, Massachusetts.
Three of his descendants were members of the U.S. Congress-and one vice president:
