Charles Suydam Cutting (1889-1972)

He was born in New York City and was a nephew of William Bayard Cutting and a grandnephew of the Mrs. Astor. He was educated at Groton School before graduating in engineering from Harvard University (1912). He served in the U.S. Army during WWI, and in 1925, he went on his first expedition to Chinese Turkestan with Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt. He traveled to Ethiopia in 1926, Assam in 1927, and first went to Tibet in 1928. He returned to Tibet in 1930, securing an audience with the Dalai Lama, and in the same year he toured the Galapagos Islands aboard Vincent Astor's yacht Nourmahal. He traveled to Celebes, Upper Burma, and Nepal, but became best known for returning to Tibet in 1935, becoming one of the few Americans ever to enter the forbidden city of Lhasa. Over the preceding years, he had ingratiated himself to Dalai Lama through a series of gifts that included a pair of dachshunds, a pair of dalmatians, gold watches and heating appliances; and, in return, Cutting was given a Lhasa Apso dog that became the first of its breed to enter the U.S. He wrote an account of his travels, The Fire Ox and Other Years, as well as a number of articles for the Museum of Natural History, including one which he write about hunting with a Maharajah's specially trained cheetahs.

In 1927, he was recruited by Vincent Astor as a member of The Room, a group of high-society amateur spies who reported to their close friend and fellow New Yorker, President Franklin Roosevelt, acting against isolationists who didn't want America to enter WWII. He reached the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the U.S. Army and was awarded the Croix de Guerre (with gold star) and an Order of the Black Star from the French, and was made an honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (C.B.E).

In 1932, he married to the widowed Mrs. Helen (McMahon) Brady who joined him on his second expedition to Tibet in 1937. After she died, he remarried another widow, Mrs. Mary Percy (Pyne) Filley. He lived with both his wives at "Old Fort Bay" - a 35-acre estate on the western tip of New Providence Island in the Bahamas - originally purchased by his first wife's first husband. Among others, the Cuttings entertained OSS Operative and fellow adventurer Gertrude Legendre, as well as the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson, both in the Bahamas and at "Hamilton Farms", their home in Gladstone, New Jersey. He died at his summer home on Chappaquiddick Island in Edgartown, Massachusetts, and his widow continued to live in Bernardsville and then Far Hills, until her death in 1994.