According to a biographical article reprinted in the New York Times, "he had no rank in college and in truth was president of the "Lazy Club".

[citation needed] He apprenticed as a lawyer in Topsham, Maine, but established his own practice in the growing lumber-port of Bangor in 1825.

The two constructed the Jonas Cutting–Edward Kent House in Bangor's Broadway neighborhood, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an example of the Greek Revival style.

[1] Kent ended his public life as an associate justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court (1859–73).

[1] He died of congestive heart failure in 1877 in Bangor, Maine, and is buried at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.