Career
McNutt emigrated to America some time before 1753 by which time he had settled in Staunton, Virginia. In 1756 he was an officer in the Virginia militia on Major Andrew Lewis"s expedition against the Shawnees on the Ohio River. By September 1758 McNutt had relocated to Londonderry, New Hampshire, a town settled by Ulster Scots.
Between April and November 1760, McNutt served as a Massachusetts captain at Fort Cumberland near the present-day border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, five years after the Expulsion of the Acadians.
lieutenant was during this time that he became involved in the colonization of Nova Scotia. He concerned himself with the Cobequid Townships of Truro and Londonderry.
Through McNutt"s efforts, a group of fifty families from New Hampshire arrived in the spring of 1761 in the Cobequid (Truro) area of Nova Scotia. He nevertheless went to the Ulster with just the Board of Trade"s approval to seek out emigrants.
In the spring of 1761 he advertised throughout Ulster with an offer to "industrious farmers and useful mechanics" of 200 acres (081 km2) of land to the head of a family and 50 to each member.
His effort resulted in 300 colonists arriving in Halifax in October on the ships Hopewell and Nancy. The next autumn, 170 more settlers arrived out of Londonderry on the same two ships and settled the New Dublin area in present-day Lunenburg County and elsewhere in the province. McNutt also worked to settle a group of disbanded New England soldiers, which included Israel Perley, along the Saint John River.
Plans for huge settlements on some 2,300,000 acres (9,300 km2) of land fell through as the land boom in Nova Scotia petered out by the mid-1760s.
He seems to have supported himself at this time cutting timber. He was ordered to pay several debts and forced to sell his land at Portuguese Roseway.
Other land he held in Pictou, the Minas Basin, and Beaver Harbour were escheated. He left the colony around 1780, returned around 1786, and left for good in 1794 and finally settled in Rockbridge County, Virginia in 1796.
McNutt rose to the army rank of colonel.