The following summarizes Nathan Cutler’s own words in his request for a U.S. pension as recorded in pension file S12643.

When the Revolution broke out, Nathan was living in the Nine Partners tract of Dutchess County. In October 1775 he answered an early call-up under Captain Isaac Bloom and spent about six weeks hauling lumber from Fishkill Landing to build barracks for Continental troops along the Hudson.

The following year he volunteered in Captain Nelson’s company and was posted to Fort Montgomery in the Highlands. He served about five months and—by his account—was dismissed a day or two before the fort fell to the British in October 1777. Shortly afterward he married Elizabeth “Betsy” Travis, a Dutchess County woman, “nine miles north-east of Poughkeepsie,” and wintered near her father’s home, “within eight miles” of the old Travis place in Pleasant Valley/Clinton.

In 1779 his militia company was called “down the river” to face British threats in the Highlands, working posts like Gallows Hill and Peekskill for roughly three months. After a short visit with family at Coeymans (Albany County), he enlisted for a longer stretch—“for one year”—with a promise of a lieutenant’s commission. He says he received written authority from his captain to act as a lieutenant, and he was sworn in at Albany by a local justice named Cuddeback.

From Albany he was sent to recruit men for the batteau service—the boat crews that moved troops and supplies on the upper Hudson. Through the winter he managed boats and men, then in spring ran bateaux with provisions to Fort Edward. Later, he rejoined his unit at West Point, where he was made orderly corporal, and cycled through key Hudson Valley posts: Stony Point, Dobbs Ferry, Albany, Schenectady, and Fort Plain. During an Indian raid at Schoharie, he volunteered an extra ten days and saw action before returning to Fort Plain and finally home as winter set in.

Nathan closes his declaration by listing the places he lived after the war: Coeymans, Onondaga, Cato (Cayuga County), and, at the time of the application (1832), Lodi in Seneca County. His identity and service are backed in the file by a Methodist minister, William Snow, and by members of his wife’s family, including Cornelius Travis—and elsewhere by an affidavit from Abraham Cutler, who swore to holding (and losing) Nathan’s original certificate.