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JOHN CUTLER (James2 James 1) John Cutler was born at Cambridge Farms, Massachusetts, on April 14, 1675, the fifth child in a family of eight. At this time the 135,000 English colonists were locked in a life-or-death battle with the Indian Nations. Many families of the area were massacred, and disease was so common that about half of all the children born lived less than two years. The Cutlers were fortunate in many respects. In particular, none were killed by Indians, and an unusually high proportion enjoyed good health and remarkably long life. As a matter of interest, it appears that none ever became involved in any part of the witch trials or other fantastic excesses of the day which became so prevalent in the area. In those days the causes of disease were unknown. Any adversity was likely to be blamed on "the devil" and sickness was explained as "harboring devils." Perhaps the greatest cause of disease besides the lack of understanding of its nature, was poor sanitation. The Cutlers usually lived away from the concentrations of people and this may be a simple explanation of their general level of good health. In 1685, when he was ten years old, John's father died, leaving his mother to raise the eight children. Today that sounds like a desperate predicament, but the nature of early families eased this common problem somewhat. John's family as he grew up consisted of grandparents, aunts and uncles on all the adjoining farms, as well as the large group of brothers and sisters. Life was simple enough that all children did full chores by the age of six, and boys did men's work by the age of ten. There was very little money, and so little use for it that there were no banks in the area. Most of the transactions that did take place were based on barter, so that a widow who had a good farm, and able-bodied sons was better off than might be imagined, except for the personal loss of the husband. On February 6, 1700 when he was almost 25 years old, John married Hannah Snow, at nearby Woburn. Her grandfather, Richard Snow, had been one of the early settlers at Watertown and her father, John Snow, and mother, the former Mary Green, had taken up farming at Woburn. John brought Hannah back to the Cutler farm at Cambridge Farms where in the next 13 years eight of their eleven children were born. Officially the period from 1702-1713 was Queen Anne's War during which the French incited the Indians to many skirmishes on the nearby frontier, but this must have been accepted as routine by the colonists by now. The older settlers probed the fringe areas for new settlement, selling out profitably as the tide of new people poured in from England, and by, now, from other countries as well. |