cutting.html

The Mt. Adams Sun, Bingen, WA., April 24, 1958, page 4
Includes portrait

HUNDRED YEARS OF C.M. CUTTING SPAN MOST MOMENTOUS CENTURY

Twenty-one men have been President of the U.S. since C.M. (Cheney Marshall) Cutting of Trout Lake was born at Princeton, Mass. on August 12, 1857. He died Wednesday, April 17, at Skyline Hospital.
During this most momentous century in world history, a lot happened and Mr. Cutting was interested in it all.
He was born in the year a lanky lawyer named Lincoln attacked the Supreme Court for handing down the Dred Scott decision.
The whole world was in a turmoil. In India native troops turned new Enfield rifles against the British for issuing bullets greased with beef fat, an insult to their religion.
The first train had just chugged over the Mississippi. Way out in Utah, Brigham Young commanded his followers to repel the "invasion" of 6000 federal troops sent west by President Buchanan.
Buchanan, a pro-slavery man, also broke up the free-state legislature of Kansas by having its leaders arrested as revolutionists.
On Jan. 1, 1857 the U.S. national debt reached $27 million. Last summer when Trout Lake celebrated Mr. Cutting's 100th birthday the federal debt had increased 10,000 times to $272 billion.

BOYHOOD

To dispel any doubt about his age, the Sun's Trout Lake correspondent, Mrs. Sylvia Johnson, wrote the town clerk of Princeton, Mass, who replied:
"Cheney Marshall Cutting was born in Princeton, Mass. August 20, 1857 to Joseph and Elizabeth Cutting: informant, Mrs. Stephen Cutting, Registrar, on Feb. 16, 1858.
His father, a Methodist minister, fought on the Union side in the Civil War and died while Cheney was quite young. He apparently inherited his longevity from his mother who lived to be over 90 and once visited him in Trout Lake.
When he married at 21 Americans were still excited about Custer's recent massacre on the Little Big Horn and the hanging of a desperado named Jack McCall at Yankton, S.D. for killing James Butler Hickock, better known to history at Wild Bill.
In New Haven, Conn, an associate of medics had just opened the world's first commercial telephone exchange. F.W. Woolworth started his first five and dime store. Nihilists assassinated Alexander II, Czar of Russia.

WAY OUT WEST

From 1890, a year after the Eiffel tower opened and the first automobile went on exhibition, to 1900 when Carry Nation began cutting up in Kansas saloons with a hatchet, the Cuttings lived in Lake Forest, Ill.
In addition to operating a coal, cement and tile business, Mr. Cutting, a Democrat, took prominent part in Lake Forest politics and government which he considered two sides of the same coin.
In 1901 he came to Washington to raise cattle on an Okanagon ranch. That was the year President McKinley was assassinated and Marconi signaled the letter "S" by wireless across the Atlantic.
The next year they moved to Seattle where they operated a hotel for several years before trading their property to Dr. Belsheim for a farm in Trout Lake.
In 1910, the birth year of the Boy Scouts of America, the Cuttings moved to the valley. They lived with their niece, Miss Ada Alford, postmaster until her death when Mr. Cutting was appointed as deputy postmaster.
His wife Augusta died in 1934. Since then he has made his home with the George Pearsons. He was a member of the Trout Lake Grange, and Masonic lodge of White Salmon.

PHILOSOPHY

Using his most precious possession as a conversational scepter (a gold-headed cane given to him in farewell tribute by the Lake Forest city council), of recent years Mr. Cutting held summer court on the Pearsons' big front lawn.
Last August 20 he celebrated his 100th birthday by taking a 45-minute ride around Mt. Adams in Harold Hollenbeck's airplane. On Sunday previous the Trout Lake Grange sponsored a community reception in his honor.
"This is my first flight but it isn't the last", he told the Sun, "I like to travel and have made necessary arrangements for the last and best trip of all."
After he fell and broke his hip, Feb. 26, he told an old friend John Wyers at Skyline hospital:
"The only trouble with me is that I've lived too long."
He wasn't complaining or being maudlin. The old gentleman looked on death as a friendly door that would take him to his family and old friends. He outlived them all.
While waiting for the door to swing open -- as it did last Wednesday, April 16 -- he sang. Happy hymns, not sad ones. Gardners were in charge of funeral services held at 1 p.m. Monday, April 21 at Mt. Adams Baptist church, Trout Lake. The Rev. A.B. Waltz of Portland officiated.
Nettie Brown and Winifred Jones, accompanied by Bettina McCuistion, sang.
Burial was in Trout Lake cemetery.
Pall bearers were Clifford Stewart, Charles Coate, Rupert Jennings, Jess Christian, Palmer Wang and Earl Knutson. Mr. Cutting is survived by a nephew Orie Cutting of Snohomish; a great nephew, Harold Cutting and great niece, Mrs. Frances Brown, both of Seattle. His only brother died long ago.