O. P. (Orlando Phelps) Cutter

Little biographical information about this 19th-century writer is easy to confirm, but he is known as the author of Our Battery; Or, The Journal of Company B, 1st O.V.A., published in Cleveland in 1864. The book is a firsthand account of service with Company B of the 1st Ohio Volunteer Artillery during the American Civil War.

Because the record is sparse, it is safest to view him primarily through that work: a soldier-author writing close to the events he described, with an eye for the routines, hardships, and movement of military life. That immediacy gives the book much of its lasting appeal.

Modern readers often come to him less for a full personal biography than for the clear, on-the-ground perspective his journal preserves. For anyone interested in Civil War history, his writing offers a direct window into the experience of an Ohio artillery unit in the field.