BLOODY CUTTER’S GRAVE, DOUGLASTON

In 2007, on Forgotten New York’s first Douglaston-Little Neck tour, the late great Nigey Lennon, author-musician (The Sagebrush Bohemian: Mark Twain In California, Reinventing the Wheel) gives me a breather and relates the story of forgotten Queens County figure Bloodgood Cutter (1817-1906), a miller, potato farmer, property owner (he once owned the land where my garden apartment complex, Westmoreland Village, stands) and composer of light doggerel. He happened to be in company with Mark Twain on a visit to the Near East Holy Lands and insinuated himself into Twain’s acquaintance and generally made a nuisance of himself; in Innocents Abroad, Twain described him thusly:

“He is 50 years old, and small for his age. He dresses in home spun, and is a simple minded, honest, old fashioned farmer with a strange proclivity for writing rhymes. He writes them on all possible subjects and gets them printed on slips of paper with his portrait at the head. These he will give to any man that comes along, whether he has anything against him or not. He has already written interminable poems on ‘The Good Ship Quaker City’ and an ‘Ode to the Ocean’ and ‘Recollections of the Pleasant Time on Deck Last Night’, which pleasant time consisting in his reciting some 75 stanzas of his poetry to a large party of passengers convened on the upper deck.”

Shed no tears for Cutter, as he inherited or purchased large parcels in what are today’s Little Neck, Great Neck (where Cutter Avenue and Cutter Mill Road are named for him) and Plandome. He amassed a fortune of $750K (today that’s multimillions) and left much of it to the American Bible Society; the rest was divided among over 200 relatives. Cutter’s gravesite is prominent in the Zion Church graveyard on Northern Boulevard east of Douglaston Parkway, and you can find it just to the left of the church as you approach from Northern Boulevard.

We often believe that where we live is generic territory and nothing special. But every place has a past, and I’m glad an eccentric like Cutter was part of Little Neck’s.

Much more on Cutter in Long Island Genealogy.

As for Nigey, she was a longtime ally of Forgotten NY who became a close friend of mine. A friend and associate of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, after living in California for years, she claims to have been inspired to move back to New York with her husband, educator Eric Weaver, after encountering Forgotten NY. She passed away in November 2016.

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4/9/25