Dissecting Mrs. Cutter.

For those of us who spend our spare moments wafting about on a particular pond ( in my case, Melbourne) filled with the water of the 19th century, there comes a moment when we cast our rod into the water, lean back and wait for our trout. Well, there is a line I have been dangling in the water for many years.

I was fishing for Mrs. Cutter, only ever known here as "Mrs. Cutter, the American Contralto" whose christian name was never ever nibbled at my lure. She has remain annoyingly elusive but today she bit the hook and I have a trail.

She was born in 1840 in the United States under the name Cassie Dyer (probably Kathryn Dyer) and she married (in New York) a Boston born book-keeping bachelor of the same age named Arthur Hamilton Cutter in 1869, the very year they set sail for Australia on board the "Corea." They had only one child that I can find, born in 1871 names Cassie Everett Cutter, but who died just three years later of measles They had no more children.

An enthusiastic fellow fisherman (woman in this case) in Western Australia emailed me regarding Mrs. Cutter and there are now two lines in the water. She returned to the States sometime in the 1880's according to Thomas Harbottle Guenett and what happened from then on is a mystery, but now I am euphoric at knowing her name.

Another trout to mount on the wall.