The Connecticut Comptroller records are comprised of 69 letters to Leman W. Cutler, who was the state comptroller from 1861-1865.
Town officials corresponded with Cutler about the bounty payments to the families of soldiers serving in Connecticut regiments during the Civil War. Some sought clarification of procedures regarding payments to soldiers' wives, children, and other dependents, and many provided details about individual soldiers and their dependents. Cases dealt with issues such as estranged couples, war widows, and deserters. Writers occasionally described economic hardships and stated their reasons for believing that a particular individual should receive a bounty. The letters also pertain to payments owed to the family of a prisoner of war (August 14, 1862), to the children of a soldier who had divorced his wife (December 5, 1862), and to the families of disabled veterans (February 24, 1863, and March 11, 1863). One correspondent from Concord, New Hampshire, questioned whether a 16-year-old boy's enlistment in a Connecticut regiment entitled his mother, then living in New Hampshire, to payments from the state of Connecticut (June 6, 1862). Some of the letters include Cutler's notes about his inquiries into the writers' complaints, which often required checking muster rolls and contacting military officers.
Some of Cutler's correspondence concerns other aspects of his duties as comptroller, such as a request that the Ladies Soldier's Aid Society of New Haven, Connecticut, be permitted to use rooms in the statehouse (January 15, 1863). Cutler also received 6 letters about the state's taxation of "foreign" insurance companies (those based in other states) and a letter about the Norwalk Horse Railway Company (February 15, 1863).
Leman Woodward Cutler was born in Watertown, Connecticut, on December 12, 1807, the son of Younglove Cutler and Aurora Woodward. After graduating from Yale College in 1829, he became a farmer and public servant. He was a member of the Connecticut Senate and the Connecticut House of Representatives, a town clerk and treasurer of Watertown, a county commissioner, a probate judge, and president of the Watertown Library Association. From 1861-1865, he was the Connecticut state comptroller. Among his other duties was the oversight of bounty payments to families of soldiers who served in Connecticut regiments of the Union Army. Leman W. Cutler married Mary Elizabeth Holcomb on October 31, 1831; he died on February 9, 1901.