Frederick Robinson Cutler

Age 19, from Philadelphia, he enlisted and mustered there on 10 August 1861 as a Private in Company K, 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry.

He was wounded in action at Antietam on 17 September 1862:

I just had time to fire my piece and was in the act of reloading when I was struck in the right arm just below the shoulder. My piece rested on my left wrist in left hand I held the cartridge in the act of tearing the paper off the ball with right hand when I was struck I seised my piece with my right hand and for two minutes or more I could not released my hold and my piece kept twisting around while in my hand and as soon as I my hold was released my wound commence to bleed very freely which was alarming to me as I did not know how to stop it it being so close to shoulder and the bone being badly shattered I suffered severely. I dragged my piece as far as I was able to to prevent it falling into the hands of the rebels.

I now looked to myself for I was bleeding freely now for the Doctor to have my wound bandaged to prevent its bleeding and the thought this ran quickly through my mind and I made all haste for the rear going about a mile and a half to the hospital only to be disappointed in not finding a Doctor but at last a hospital steward dressed my wound and I felt considerable releived. I endured my sufferings patiently knowing that I would be properly attended to in time besides there were others who were worse than I who had to be attended to first. here lay at this hospital until the following morning when I was removed to our own division hospital [on the Hoffman Farm near Sharpsburg]. they put two of us in an ambulance and drove us through the woods over an newly made road and our sufferings were severely felt by the jar of the ambulance in going over stumps and stones my comrade being wounded in the right lung it caused him to spit blood.

at the division hospital I lay three days without anything to eat excepting a few crackers and some green apples the fourth day some of the members of the Sanitary Commission made their appearance and then I was comfortably carried for my wound properly dressed and myself clad in clean clothes. Many thanks to the Sanitary Commission.

Here at this I lay two weeks then I was removed [on 29 September] to Frederick City to the Convent hospital [US Army General Hospital #5], I suffered severely come over the mountains in the Ambulance the road was so rough that it caused the ambulance to jar my fractured limb so that my sufferings were intense, And during all this time I had nothing done for wound except simple [?] dressing.

while at this hospital a regular Army surgeon took charge of the ward I was in and the nurse called his attention to my case. now this was the first time that I had had a regular surgical examination of my arm since the battle it being in a sling ever since the day that I wounded. the Doctor took a hold of my arm and drew it from my body in a hurried manner, which caused me much pain, Now I am not in the habit of swearing but on this occasion I said something which I ought not to have said for which the Doctor in reproving for said that I was a brave young man out not to swear. I then beg his pardon, he told me to beg God pardon and not his. And he then told me that I would I have to loose my arm now this seem hard but as I made up my my mind to abide by the consequence I did [not] give away to feelings Knowing that I had been wounded in an honorable and just cause, my arm was amputated at the shoulder joint on account of mortification setting in the Doctors deeming it neccesary.

for three days I lay insensible and on comming to my senses I was told that I could not live twenty four hours and advised to send for my Friends, I was very weak from the loss of blood the main artery had come untied and the blood from it had soak through three matresses before discovered. But never the less I did not feel discouraged and I live contrary to the predictions of the Doctors although I was six months in recovering and my stump did not heal entirely until the 25th day of May 1863.

In 1870 he was Recorder of Deeds in Media, PA, but he died in 1873, not yet 30 years old.

His service from Bates,1 the Card File,2 and his pension cards, online from fold3. The quotes above from a letter of 26 December 1865 he wrote entering a left-hand penmanship contest, now at the Library of Congress. Hospital details also from Nelson3 and the Patient List.4 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1870. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a post-amputation photograph in the Ken Turner collection, published in Military Images (July/August 2007).

He married Mary Ann Mattis (1849-1939) in April 1870 and they had a daughter Martha Lamson Cutler(1871-1942).

06/03/1843; Gloucester, MA

05/11/1873; Media, PA; burial in Chester Rural Cemetery, Chester, PA