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Reverend Cutting Marsh

Quarter-length portrait of Reverend Cutting Marsh. View the original source document: WHI 3551

b. Danville, Vermont, 1800
d. Waupaca, Wisconsin, 1873

Cutting Marsh was a Presbyterian clergyman and missionary. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1826 and Andover Theological Seminary in 1829. In 1830 he moved to Wisconsin as missionary to the Stockbridge Indians, who had moved west from New York in 1821. He lived with the Indians at their settlement near Green Bay. In 1834 he moved with them to a new location on the east shore of Lake Winnebago. Marsh's annual reports to his sponsors from 1831 to 1848 provide a rich source of information on the tribe's life in Wisconsin.

Presbyterian Church

Marsh was also instrumental in organizing the Presbyterian Church in Milwaukee in 1837 and in Green Bay in 1838. After 1848 he carried on his missionary activities among the white settlers in Wisconsin and traveled extensively throughout the eastern part of the state, organizing churches at Fairfield, Oshkosh, Byron and Berlin. He made Waupaca his headquarters, and from 1848 to 1856 served as pastor to a number of parishes. He retired from the ministry in 1856, and lived in Waupaca until his death.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography. Colls. State Hist. Soc. Wis., 15 (1900); Early Presbyterianism in Wis., Wis. Synod. [Waukesha? Wis., 1951]; J. N. Davidson, In Unnamed Wis. (Milwaukee, 1895); C. Marsh Papers.]