In the late summer of 1832, nearly fifty years after he first hauled barracks timber on the Hudson, Nathan Cutler of Lodi, Seneca County, New York appeared before Judge Levi Whedon to claim a pension under the Act of June 7, 1832. He was about seventy-four. His memory, he admitted, was “worn by old age,” but what he offered was a vivid map of one soldier’s war—anchored to places every Hudson Valley family knows by heart.

Beginnings: Peekskill → Nine Partners

Nathan stated plainly that he was “born at Peekskill in the year 1758.” When the alarms began, he was living in the Nine Partners tract of Dutchess County. His first duty came in October 1775 under Captain Isaac Bloom: six weeks as a teamster “carting lumber from Fishkill Landing for building barracks.”

Early the next year (by his memory), he volunteered again—this time into Captain Nelson’s company, posted in the Highlands at Fort Montgomery. He says he served about five months and was “verbally discharged two days before the fort was taken” by the British in October 1777.

Marriage and the Travis connection

“The month following,” Nathan said, he married Elizabeth “Betsy” Travis, “nine miles north-east of Poughkeepsie.”That winter he “moved back to Dutchess County within eight miles of [his] father-in-law”—a priceless clue that ties the couple to the Travis homestead in Pleasant Valley/Clinton.

Years later, Betsy’s brother Isaac Travis would put that into a sworn sentence (Dutchess Co., 26 Jul 1832): he had known Nathan “since before the war,” had seen him “at Poughkeepsie and at Saratoga,” and that Nathan “lived… in the same house in Pleasant Valley” with Isaac’s father—the veteran’s Travis father-in-law.

Tours along the Hudson

In 1779 Nathan’s militia company was ordered “down the river” to confront British movements at the Highlands, Gallows Hill, and Peekskill, a tour of about three months. Shortly after, he visited family at Coeymans (Albany County)—a detail that would later help confuse him with a different “Nathan of Albany.”

That summer he enlisted “for one year.” He reports being promised a lieutenant’s commission, and that his captain gave him written authority “to act in the capacity of lieutenant.” He even notes being sworn in at Albany before a justice named Cuddeback. From Albany he was detailed to recruit for what the file calls the “batteau service,” taking charge of boats and men through winter, then carrying provisions to Fort Edward when the river opened.

Later he rejoined the company at West Point, where he “was made orderly corporal.” He then cycled through the familiar Hudson posts—Stony Point, Dobbs Ferry, back to Albany and Schenectady, up the valley to Fort Plain, and during a raid in Schoharie he volunteered an extra ten days, “having a battle with the Indians and militia” before returning to Fort Plain and home “about the first of the winter.”

(Editorial note for readers: Nathan’s declaration describes acting as a lieutenant while recruiting; elsewhere in the same file—and in descendant society abstracts—he is recognized as Sergeant (also Corporal). No separate New York commission paper appears in the packet.)

The first filing: September–December 1832

Nathan’s formal declaration is dated 11 September 1832 at Lodi, Seneca County. On the same day Rev. William Snow (Methodist Episcopal) and neighbors—including Cornelius Travis—certified his integrity, age, and reputation as a soldier.

A few months later, 13 December 1832, Nathan added a clarifying statement: because of age and memory, he could not “swear positively” as to every duration, but “according to the best of [his] recollection” he had served **“one year as a private,” “nine months and fifteen days… as a lieutenant,” and “six months as a corporal.” It’s the most precise time accounting anywhere in the file, and it repeats the recruiting/Albany detail that seemed to matter to him.

Why the claim stalled

Like many 1832 claims, Nathan’s was flagged for want of documentary proof. In his narrative he refers to an “original certificate”—the kind of discharge or service paper the Pension Office liked to see—but that document was missing. The packet shows that the office pressed for better identity proof and an explanation of the missing certificate.

Abraham steps in: 1835

That proof came three years later from a kinsman with the same surname. In Tompkins County on 11 October 1835, Abraham Cutler swore that he was well acquainted with Nathan; that the “original certificate mentioned… was left with this deponent”; that it “remained in a desk in the store of this deponent until March last”; that after “diligent search” he “cannot find said certificate” and “believes it to be lost beyond recovery”; and that Nathan is “the identical person described in the said certificate.”

That affidavit is exactly what pension examiners wanted when a soldier’s paperwork had gone missing: a credible witness, a plausible chain of custody, and a clear statement of loss. Coupled with the earlier Travis affidavit and the clergyman’s certificate, Nathan’s identity and service were now supported from several angles—family, community, and the veteran’s own sworn account.

Outcome and later echoes

With those supplements, Nathan’s pension proceeded in the ordinary course. (Descendant society files later cite him as New York service: Sergeant; also Corporal, born Peekskill 1756–58, died late 1830s/1840 in the Chemung area—details that line up with the residences Nathan lists: Coeymans, Onondaga, Cato (Cayuga) and finally Lodi.) Long after his death, a descendant wrote to Washington in 1902 asking for a fresh certificate and, in doing so, repeated the family tradition about recruiting at Albany and “acting” as an officer—one of the threads that would fuel later confusion with an Albany/Coeymans namesake.

Why this file matters to the family

Read together, the pages do more than win a pension: they fix our Cutlers to the Hudson Valley in the Revolutionary years. They place Nathan’s birth at Peekskill (1758); show him in Nine Partners when the first alarms sounded; marry him to Betsy Travis “nine miles N-E of Poughkeepsie”; winter him near his Travis father-in-law in Pleasant Valley; and walk him through a tour of posts—from Fishkill Landing and Fort Montgomery, to Peekskill, West Point, Stony Point, Dobbs Ferry, Albany, Schenectady, Fort Plain, and Schoharie—that match the geography of every other record we’ve found.

They also explain why some later compilers misfiled him under “Albany”: Nathan himself says he lived at Coeymans after the war and that he spent months recruiting in Albany. The difference is that our Nathan was not born there—he was born at Peekskill—and his marriage and kin are in Dutchess/Westchester, as the Travis affidavits confirm.

In the end, the pension packet is both proof and portrait: a veteran’s voice, a brother-in-law’s memory, a minister’s endorsement, and a son’s (or close kinsman’s) rueful confession that the key certificate was lost in a store desk—but that the man was the man all the same.

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Primary basis: Nathan Cutler pension and bounty-land application file S12642 (declarations dated 11 Sep 1832 and 13 Dec 1832; affidavits 26 Jul 1832 [Isaac Travis], 11 Sep 1832 [William Snow, Cornelius Travis, et al.], and 11 Oct 1835[Abraham Cutler]).