Sarah Purchase Henderson, 1888
M1974.70.1
Brooklyn Historical Society

Bloodgood Haviland Cutter

Sarah Purchase Henderson, 1888
M1974.70.1
Brooklyn Historical Society

Bloodgood Haviland Cutter (1817–1906), nicknamed the “Long Island Farmer Poet,” is best known today as one of the “gentlemen poets” of the 1800s. A wealthy farmer, land speculator, and venture capitalist, Cutter descended from two prominent Queens County families. During his lifetime, he inherited or purchased significant property along the modern border between Queens and Nassau counties, outside North Hempstead. Sarah Purchase Henderson (1841–1914), the artist of this portrait, was Cutter’s niece.

This portrait is a portal into the past. Discover Long Island’s unique history in the stories below.

“Our land will then take such a rise”

The Growth and Suburbanization of Queens County

Bloodgood Haviland Cutter was the descendant on both sides of his family from some of Queens County’s earliest European settlers, granted land in the region in the 1600s by Dutch governor Willem Kieft. When the English government formally incorporated Queens County in 1683, it was home to five small townships: Newtown, Flushing, Jamaica, Hempstead, and Oyster Bay. Like the rest of Long Island, Queens was sparsely populated and its economy centered on farming and agriculture driven by enslaved workers. In 1790, less than 5,400 people lived in Queens, including 1,095 enslaved people.

Hatchel, 18th century 

Made in Newtown, Queens County, Long Island

M1991.456.1

Brooklyn Historical Society

Queens remained largely rural well into the 1800s, but the introduction of railroads jump-started its transformation. The first tracks of the Long Island Railroad were laid in 1836 and connected Brooklyn to Jamaica, Queens. In the next decades, competing railroad corporations pushed rail lines farther east onto Long Island.

Map of Long Island showing the Long Island Railroad, 1884

Long Island Rail Road American Bank Note Company 

L.I.-1884b.Fl

Brooklyn Historical Society

Cutter’s poetic musings provide evidence of his avid interest in railroads. He invested in several, including the Long Island Rail Road Company and the North Shore Railroad Company, the latter organized in 1863 to build tracks east from Flushing towards Great Neck. In his poem “North Side Railroad,” Cutter enthusiastically cried out: 

Come out, my friends, and now subscribe
To build a road on the North Side,
If each will only do his part,
We soon will see the railroad start.

Port Jefferson Rail Road Station, 1878

George B. Brainerd

V1972.1.197

Brooklyn Historical Society

Improved transportation options in the second half of the 1800s led to a boom in land speculation in Queens and the construction of new communities. Many new residents were attracted to Queens because they were searching for a suburban retreat from the growing congestion of New York City.

Roslyn Highlands Incorporated, New York, after 1892

L.I.-[189-?]a.Fl

Brooklyn Historical Society

While Bloodgood Cutter’s quaint “Long Island Farmer Poet” image contradicts his status as a shrewd venture capitalist who increased his wealth by investing strategically. In his poem “North Side Railroad,” Cutter summed up the risk and rewards of investing in Long Island’s railroads. 

Our land will then take such a rise,
‘Twill us agreeably surprise…

Then citizens will out remove,
And then the North Side will improve;
How much better that will pay,
Then raising either corn or hay. 

Then if you wish to sell your land,
Can get the chink right in your hand;
And then if you desire more ease;
Can work or play, just as you please.

“Pleased that he is a New Yorker”

Bloodgood Cutter, Greater New York, and the Birth of Nassau County

“Sea-beauty! Stretch’d and basking!”

Long Island as Refuge and Artist’s Inspiration

Why Are There So Few Great Female Artists?

Discovering Sarah Purchase Henderson, Bloodgood Cutter’s portraitist

Mark Twain’s “Poet Lariat”

Bloodgood Cutter and the Famed Quaker City Expedition

“Pleased that he is a New Yorker”

Bloodgood Cutter, Greater New York, and the Birth of Nassau County

From his Little Neck farm sixteen miles northeast of Manhattan, Bloodgood Cutter witnessed the great debate over the consolidation of Greater New York, which was decades in the making but at its fever pitch in the 1890s. Cutter seems to have left no poetic remembrance related to it despite the enormity of the event. Nevertheless, his likely perspective on consolidation becomes clear through his political and personal interests and provides insight from the region that eventually became the far eastern edge of Greater New York City.

Old home of Poet Bloodgood Cutter, Little Neck, 1909

Eugene L. Armbruster photographs and scrapbooks (V1974.022.14.030)

Brooklyn Historical Society

Following the Civil War, the region around New York Bay experienced unprecedented economic and population growth. For many area entrepreneurs, the financial benefits were stymied by internal competition and clashing municipal governments. With promises that consolidation could increase tax revenue, improve land values, and end boundary disputes, boosters rigorously campaigned to consolidate the region under a united municipal government, one to oversee New York City, Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens County, parts of Westchester County, and Staten Island. After decades of petitioning and a public vote in 1894 that passed but was squashed in Albany, the state approved consolidation in 1897. The City of Greater New York, more than 300 square miles and 3 million residents strong, came into existence on January 1, 1898.

Frederick W. Wurster mayoral campaign button, 1896

M1991.415.1a,b

Brooklyn Historical Society

Following consolidation, newspaper publishers around the country described Bloodgood Cutter, “the farmer poet of Long Island,” as “much pleased over the fact that he is now a citizen of New York.” As an extensive property holder and a supporter of modernization efforts like laying new railroad tracks that connected eastern Queens County to New York, Cutter saw great potential personal reward in consolidation.

Atlas of Long Island, New York, 1873 

Frederick W. Beers 

New York Public Library Digital Collection

Cutter’s property, encompassing the southern tip of Little Neck Bay between Flushing and North Hempstead, was very close to the city’s new borders. Consolidation tore Queen’s County in half. The towns closest to Manhattan—Long Island City, Newtown, Flushing, and Jamaica—joined Greater New York. The eastern towns of Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay did not. On January 22, 1898, the citizens of the latter towns met to discuss their future.

Image Missing

[E09 tombstone]
Nassau County, New York, 1906
L.I.-[19–?].Fl
Brooklyn Historical Society

Residents of the farther, disputed areas in Queens debated joining either New York City or Suffolk County. Ultimately, they decided to become a new county, Nassau County, “for the simple reason that they could govern themselves, and their interests were identical.” Nassau County was born January 1, 1899. As the 1906 map of Nassau County shows, New York City annexed Cutter’s property into Flushing, creating a cut into North Hempstead in an effort to control the ports on the Bay. Bloodgood Cutter became a New Yorker.

“Our land will then take such a rise”

The Growth and Suburbanization of Queens County

“Sea-beauty! Stretch’d and basking!”

Long Island as Refuge and Artist’s Inspiration

Why Are There So Few Great Female Artists?

Discovering Sarah Purchase Henderson, Bloodgood Cutter’s portraitist

Mark Twain’s “Poet Lariat”

Bloodgood Cutter and the Famed Quaker City Expedition

“Sea-beauty! Stretch’d and basking!”

Long Island as Refuge and Artist’s Inspiration

In his characteristic quirky style, Bloodgood Cutter frequently meditated on his birthplace in his poetry:

Long Island is a famous place,
The grand resort of our city race;
They leave hot streets and dwellings there,
To come on it to breathe pure air. 

In many countries I have been,
And many grant resorts I’ve seen;
But take Long Island all around, Shores by the Sea and on the Sound,
With the privileges of the same,
Of many kinds that I can name

 

Not a household name today, Bloodgood Cutter was nevertheless part of a wave of artists—painters, writers, and poets—who were inspired by Long Island. As life in great urban centers like New York City and Brooklyn grew increasingly chaotic, polluted, and loud, these artists sought refuge in rural Long Island to the east, where the picturesque beauty of America survived and offered a haven for some.

Brooklyn in 1851, circa 1851

Francis H. Heinrich

M1974.104.1

Brooklyn Historical Society

In the 1800s and 1900s, artists including Winslow Homer, Frederick Church, Thomas Moran, and Jackson Pollock worked on and drew inspiration from Long Island. As author Elizabeth Champney wrote, they were attracted to towns like East Hampton because they provided “rural hooks for the landscape painter delightfully English in sentiment, [with] beach and sea panoramas, stormy cloud-battles or shimmering calm for the marine painter.”

North Shore of Shelter Island, 1878

George B. Brainerd

Early Brooklyn and Long Island photograph collection (V1972.1.079)

Brooklyn Historical Society

Some of America’s greatest wordsmiths lived on Long Island, including: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), who owned a house in Great Neck, Nassau County, in the 1920s that inspired his literary masterpiece, The Great Gatsby; John Steinbeck (1902–1968), who owned a home in Sag Harbor and wrote several books while living on Long Island, including his last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, which takes a line from Shakespeare as its title; newspaper editor and acclaimed poet William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), who purchased extensive property in the village of Roslyn Harbor in 1843 and settled there in a grand country house he called Cedarmere, which is still standing today and is on the register of National Historic Places Register.

William Cullen Bryant, circa 1841

Cornelius Ver Bryck

M1974.114.1

Brooklyn Historical Society

View of Cedarmere, 1878

Elias Lewis Jr. 

Early Brooklyn and Long Island photograph collection (V1972.1.562)

Brooklyn Historical Society 

Even in this company, Walt Whitman (1818–1892) is still considered one of Long Island’s (and America’s) greatest poets. Born in Suffolk County, Whitman moved to Brooklyn when he was just four years old. He returned to the East End throughout his life. Known for his brief two-year stint in the 1840s as an editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a decade earlier he had founded Huntington’s first newspaper, The Long Islander. In his writing Whitman referred to Long Island as “Paumanok,” the American Indian term for the island meaning “land of tribute.”

Walt Whitman, 1856

Frontispiece of Leaves of Grass, second edition

PS 3201.1856 

Brooklyn Historical Society

“Our land will then take such a rise”

The Growth and Suburbanization of Queens County

“Pleased that he is a New Yorker”

Bloodgood Cutter, Greater New York, and the Birth of Nassau County

Why Are There So Few Great Female Artists?

Discovering Sarah Purchase Henderson, Bloodgood Cutter’s portraitist

Mark Twain’s “Poet Lariat”

Bloodgood Cutter and the Famed Quaker City Expedition

Why Are There So Few Great Female Artists?

Discovering Sarah Purchase Henderson, Bloodgood Cutter’s portraitist

This portrait arrived at the Long Island Historical Society without much recorded information. It likely joined the LIHS collection after Cutter died in 1906, when the contents of his Little Neck, Queens, estate sold at auction. The identity of the portraitist, “S. Henderson,” documented on the lower right corner of the canvas, has long been a mystery. We now know that the portrait’s painter was related to Bloodgood Cutter, and a woman.

Federal census for Bloodgood Cutter, 1900

United States Census Bureau

National Archives and Records Administration

Cutter had no children of his own, but he did have many nephews and nieces, including Sarah Purchase Henderson. In 1900, Sarah was staying with her uncle and appeared in the federal census with “oil paint artist” listed as her profession. Following this trail revealed Henderson to be the painter of this portrait, as evidenced by a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article from 1888 announcing that she had “presented Bloodgood Cutter, the farmer poet, with an oil portrait of himself.”

“Down on Long Island”

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 25, 1888

Brooklyn Public Library

Like many female artists in the 1700s and 1800s, Henderson likely struggled to find a place for herself within the male-dominated profession. Although women artists did join professional organizations like the National Academy of Design and Brooklyn Art League and exhibited their works, all too often they were dismissed as “accomplished” amateurs.

“Mrs. Sarah Henderson, Resident of the City for 33 Years, is Dead” 

Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 18, 1914

Despite this, women artists like Henderson pursued their passions, seeking training and opportunity domestically and abroad. Today, the lives and talents of female artists are being rediscovered. Like Sarah Henderson’s portrait of her uncle, other paintings at BHS previously unattributed are being rediscovered as the work of local female artists, including Brooklynite Eleanor C. Bannister (1858-1939) and portraitist Susan Mary (S.M.) Norton (1855-1922).

Joshua Marsden Van Cott, Jr., 1891

Susan Mary Norton

M1974.241.1

Brooklyn Historical Society

When Henderson painted this portrait of her Uncle Bloodgood in 1888, he was seventy-one years old, far older than he appears in her idealized representation of him. Evidence shows that Henderson likely based her painting on a photograph of her uncle taken in the 1860s, immortalizing him in his prime. The portrait then reflects Bloodgood Cutter’s ideas about his legacy, which he recorded in a poem, “On Seeing His Own Likeness.” 

My friends, this likeness of my mortal form,
Preserve as a keep-sake when I am gone;
That is, when death lays low my weary head,
And consigns me to mansions of the dead. 

Then my lines, though they may be rude in kind,
Will represent the inner man, or mind
And by using my simple pen—
Indite those for myself, and fellow-men.

“Our land will then take such a rise”

The Growth and Suburbanization of Queens County

“Pleased that he is a New Yorker”

Bloodgood Cutter, Greater New York, and the Birth of Nassau County

“Sea-beauty! Stretch’d and basking!”

Long Island as Refuge and Artist’s Inspiration

Mark Twain’s “Poet Lariat”

Bloodgood Cutter and the Famed Quaker City Expedition

Mark Twain’s “Poet Lariat”

Bloodgood Cutter and the Famed Quaker City Expedition

In 1867, Bloodgood Cutter traveled with the “Quaker City Expedition,” a five-month tourist cruise throughout the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. The trip quickly became known around the world because of a young journalist on the trip named Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain). Clemens wrote about the journey and his fellow travelers first in a series of newspaper articles and then, in 1869, in his best-selling novel Innocents Abroad. The novel immortalized Bloodgood as the “Poet Lariat” of the Quaker City Expedition. While Twain bestowed the title with his characteristic sardonicism, Cutter nevertheless embraced it.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain, 1867

Abdullah Freres 

LOT 13301, no. 8 

Library of Congress

Several Brooklynites from Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church congregation organized the 1867 Quaker City Expedition. Beecher himself was originally slated to attend but withdrew before the steamer set sail in June 1867. Although some prospective passengers also withdrew when Beecher did, ultimately 75 excursionists—including Bloodgood Cutter and Mark Twain—set out to explore the Old World for the hefty price of $1,250 each. According to Twain, the group included “three ministers of the gospel, eight doctors, sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military and naval chieftains with sounding titles, an ample crop of ‘professors’ of various kinds, and a gentleman who had ‘Commissioner of the United States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa’ thundering after his name in one awful blast!”

USS Quaker City, circa 1900

Clary Ray 

NH57840

Naval History and Heritage Command

Traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to destinations including Gibraltar, Paris, Florence, Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Cairo, the pilgrims spent a great deal of time together, and the quirks of some travelers became the subject of Twain’s sharp pen. Of Bloodgood Cutter, the ship’s unwanted Poet Lariat, Twain recorded another passenger exclaiming, “I never seen one of them poets that yet knowed anything. He’ll go down and grind out about four reams of the awfellest slush about that old rock and give it to…anybody he comes across first which he can impose on. Pity but somebody’d take that poor old lunatic and dig all that poetry rubbage out of him.”

Bloodgood Cutter

The Long Island Farmer’s Poems (New York: N. Tibbals & Sons, 1886)

Brooklyn Historical Society

Bloodgood Cutter

Inscription in The Long Island Farmer’s Poems (New York: N. Tibbals & Sons, 1886)

Brooklyn Historical Society

Twain’s remarks, whether good-humored or mean-spirited, did not affect Cutter’s fondness for expressing himself in prose. He continued to write and share his poems—sometimes irreverent “musings on a wheel-barrow,” sometimes commentaries on friends’ weddings or deaths, sometimes reactions to major events like the Civil War. In 1886, Cutter finally collected hundreds of his pieces into a book, The Long Island Farmer’s Poems. At least half of the book was made up of poems inspired by the Quaker City Expedition, with one that included a gentle gibe at the young man who made him “famous.” 

One droll person there was on board,
The passengers called him “Mark Twain;”
He’d talk and write all sort of stuff,
In his queer way, would it explain.

“Our land will then take such a rise”

The Growth and Suburbanization of Queens County

“Pleased that he is a New Yorker”

Bloodgood Cutter, Greater New York, and the Birth of Nassau County

“Sea-beauty! Stretch’d and basking!”

Long Island as Refuge and Artist’s Inspiration

Why Are There So Few Great Female Artists?

Discovering Sarah Purchase Henderson, Bloodgood Cutter’s portraitist