JONAS CUTTING, LL. D., son of Jonas Cutting and Betsey Eames Cutting, and grandson of Jonas, senior, was born in Croydon, on the 3d of November, 1800. He prepared for college, principally under the tuition of Otis Hutchins, then Principal of Kimball Union Academy in Plainfield, and entered the Freshman Class at Dartmouth College in 1819. He graduated in 1823, and subsequently read law, first with the late Hon. Henry Hubbard, of Charlestown, and the third year with Hon. Reuel Williams, at Augusta, Maine, where he was admitted to the bar in 1826. Thence he removed to the town of Orono, in Penobscot county, where he remained in the practice of his profession until October, 1831, when he removed to Bangor, the shire town of the same county.
In 1833 he was married to Lucretia H., daughter of John Bennoch, Esq., of Orono. They had three daughters and one son, the eldest, Rebecca D., died in infancy; the second, Elizabeth J., at the age of 15, and his son, Frederick H., in his 21st year. His only surviving child is Helen A., who is married to Dr. Augustus C. Hamlin, only son of Hon. Elijah L. Hamlin, brother of the late Vice-President.
His wife, Lucretia, died in 1842. In 1843 he was again married to Ann R., youngest daughter of the late Hon. Samuel Fales, of Taunton, Mass., with whom he now lives and resides in the city of Bangor.
In 1854 Mr. Cutting was appointed Judge of the Supreme Judicial Court of his adopted State, and at the end of seven years, the duration of the judicial tenor, was re-appointed, which office he now holds. In 1858 his Alma Hater conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. The following is his letter to the Committee of Arrangements Bangor, May 7, 1866.
OTIS COOPER, Esq.
MY DEAR SIR:
Your letter, extending an invitation to me to be present at the Centennial Celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the settlement of my dear old Croydon, has been received.
I cordially thank the Committee of Arrangements for their kind remembrance of one who will be present on that occasion, unless his official duties should call him elsewhere. A few of the committee I know personally, and the fathers of them all. The person selected to address you on that occasion I well know. He was a Samuel in his youth, and is a St. Paul in his maturity, ” without these bonds.” And how could it be otherwise? He was born at the base of Croydon mountain, he on one side and the present Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court on the other. There is no such mountain in New Hampshire. To say nothing of other natives whose eyes first opened to behold its grandeur and beauty, those two individuals do less to immortalize the mountain, than the mountain to immortalize them. Dear old mountain !-had you been originally selected for the “garden of Eden,” man would never have fallen.
Yours truly, JONAS CUTTING.