Individual Details

The Surveyor General's Office was est in 1796.
It was the Land Office for sale of lands in NorthWestern Territory, NW of Ohio River and above mouth of Kentucky River.
The first Surveyor General was Rufus Putnam. He was appointed March 30, 1797. The office was opened by him at Marietta, Ohio, where it remained until April 1805 when it moved to Cincinnati.
The second Surveyor General was appointed Nov 1, 1803 so Rufus must have served until then.
The Surveyor General's office was est by bill signed by Geo. Washington, May 1796.
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General in Revolutionary War-- Eben p 81
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Memoirs of Rufus Putnam:
p. 9-11
I am the youngest Son of Elisha Putnam, who was the third Son of Edward, grandson of John Putnam, who Settled at Salem in 1634 as before mentioned --- My Mothers Maiden name was Susanna Fuller, daughter of Jonathan Fuller of Danvers---
I was born the 9th of April 1738, at Sutton in Massachusetts. in 1745 at the age of Seven years and two months, I became an orphan by the death of my Father. from his death to September 1747 I lived with my grandfather Fuller. to this time I was keept at School as much as Children usually were at that day, and could read pritty well in the bible--- ----
In Sept 1747 I went to live with my Step Father, Capt John Sadler ( at Upton) and continued with him untill his death (in September or October 1753)
during the six year I lived with Capt Sadler, I never Saw the inside of a School house, except about three weeks. he was very illiterate himself, and took no care for the education of his family; but this was not all I was made a ridecule of, and otherwise abused for my attention to books, and attempting to write, and learn Arethmatic, however, amidst all those discouragements I made Some advances in writeing and Arethmatic, that is I could make Letters that could be under stood, and had gon as far in Arethmatic as to work the rule of three (without any teacher but the book)---- Oh! my Children beware you neglect not the education of any under your care as I was neglected. ----
In March 1754 I was bound apprentice to Daniel Mathews of Brokfield, to the Millwights trade; by him my education was as much neglected, as by Capt Sadler, except that he did not deny me the use of a Light for Study in the winter evenings ---
I turned my attention chiefly to Arethmatic, Geography, and history...I was zealous to obtain knowledgw, but having no guide I knew not where to begin nor what course to pursue,-- hence neglecting Spelling and gramer when young I have Suffered nuch through life on that account.
A
March 15th 1757. The was between England and France which commenced in 1754 he marched with Capt Eben Learneds Company.

(Rufus gives much detail about the fighting. After the war he goes on)

p. 35-36
1761 in March I comminced the Millwrite business which I pursued as my cheif imployment for Seven or eight year, and after that untill the revolutionary war comminced in 1775 my busines was pritty much confined to farming and Surveying & I also studied Navigation
April 6th 1761 I was maried to Elizabeth Ayres daughter of Wm Ayers Esquire of Brookfield ---
May 14th I was taken Sick of the bilious fevor by which I was brought very low but it pleased god to spare my life and in about three months I recovered my health -- ---
November 16th it pleased god to remove my wife by death, leaveing me an infent Son to take care of. my fealings on that ocation may be easier convived then described. however if I did not decive my self I bore this trial without murmering against the providence of God--- ---
1762 September 29th God was pleased in his holy providence to remove my little Son (Ayres) by death.
January 10th 1765 I was maried to Persis Rice daughter of Zebulon Rice of Westbourough, who is through the gooness of God Still living
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DAR Lineage Book V 113
#112403 p 132
Rufus Putnam (1738-1824) was appointed engineer with the rank of Colonel and fortified Dorchester Heights. In 1778, with his cousin, Isreal Putnam, he superintended the fortifications at West Point. He served to the close of the War and was made brigadier-general. He was born in Rutland, Mass; died in Marietta, Ohio.
See also #98274.A
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History of Sutton p 708
Rufus 5 (Elisha 4 , Edward 3 , Thomas 2 , John 1 ), m. 1st, Miss Elizabeth Ayres, April 1761; m. 2d, Miss Persis Rice. Ch. 1, Elizabeth, b. Nov. 19, 1765; 2, Persis, b. June 6, 1767; 3, Susanna, b. Aug. 5, 1768; 4, Abigail, b. Aug. 7, 1770; 5, William Rufus, b. Dec. 12, 1771; 6, Franklin, b. May 27, 1774; d. Apr. 1776; 7, Edwin, b. Jan. 19, 1776; 8, Patty, b. Nov. 25, 1777; 9, Cathe- rine, b. Oct. 17, 1780; 10, Ayres.
See sketch of Gen. Rufus Putnam in history of the homes, in connection with his birthplace in district number three.
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Rufus Putnam was appointed engineer with the rank of Colonel and fortified Doechester Heights. He served to the close of the war, when he was brigadier- general. He was born in Sutton and died in Marietta, Ohio.
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Rufus was a soldier of the old French War. He was a lieutenant colonel of a Worcester county regiment when the Revolutionary War broke out. He was appointed, against his protests, engineer, to take charge of the works around Boston.
Washington quote afterward said of him - "He was the best engineer officer in the army, whether American or Frenchman."
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wikitrees
A brief outline of the life of General Rufus Putnam, a soldier of the old French War, the engineer of the works which compelled the British Army to evacuate Boston and the fortifications of West Point, and the Founder and Father of Ohio.
The following quotes are from the [1]
"I am the youngest Son of Elisha Putnam, who was the third Son of Edward, grandson of John Putnam, who Settled at Salem in 1634 . . . My Mothers Maiden name was Susanna Fuller, daughter of Jonathan Fuller of Danvers."
"I was born the 9th of April 1738, at Sutton in Massachusetts, in 1745 at the age of Seven years and two months, I became an orphan by the death of my Father, from his death to September 1747 I lived with my grandfather Fuller. to this time I was keept at School as much as Children usually were at that day, and could read pritty well in the bible"
"In Sept 1747 I went to live with my Step Father, Capt John Sadler and continued with him untill his death"
"during the six year I lived with Capt Sadler, I never Saw the inside of a School house, except about three weeks. he was very illiterate himself, and took no care for the education of his family . . . Oh! my Children beware you neglect not the education of any under your care as I was neglected."
"In March 1754 I was bound apprentice to Daniel Mathews of Brokfield, to the Millwights trade"
"March 15th 1757. The war between England and France which commeced in 1754 Still continuing I engaged in the provential Service"
1760 Commissioned Ensign, Massachusetts.
"1761 in March I comminced the Millwrite business which I pursued as my chief imployment for Seven or eight years, and after that untill the revolutionary war comminced in 1775 my busines was pritty much confined to farming snd Surveying and I also studied Navagation"
"April 6th I was maried to Elisabeth Ayres daughter of Wm Ayres Esquie of Brookfield"
"November 16th it pleased god to remove my wife by death, leaving me an infent Son to take care of. my fealings on that ocation may be easier concived then described. however if I did not decive my self I bore this trial without murmering against the providence of God"
"1762 September 29th God was pleased in his holy providence to remove my little Son by death. thus was I in less then a year deprived of Mother and Child, and in them as I then thought of all earthly comfort"
"January 10th 1765 I was maried to Persis Rice daughter of Mr Zebulon Rice of Westborough, who is through the goodness of God Still living, and for our Children &c I refer you to the family record in our Quarto Bible" [Rufus Putnam died May 4, 1824. His second wife Persis Rice, who was born in 1737, died September 6, 1820. Their children were -- Elizabeth, b. 1765; d. 1830. Persis, b. 1767; m. Perly Howe; d. 1822. Susanna, b. 1768; m. Christopher Burlingame; d. 1840. Abigail, b. 1770; m. William Browning; d. 1805. William Rufus, b. 1771; m. Jerusha Guitteau; d. 1855. Franklin, b. 1774; d. 1776. Edwin, b. 1776; m. Eliza Davis; d. 1843. Martha, b. 1777; m. Benjamin Tupper; d. 1842. Catharine, b. 1780; m. Ebenezer Buckingham; d. 1808.]
1773 Commissioned Deputy Surveyor, West Florida.
1774 Commissioned Captain Lieutenant of Grenadiers, Massachusetts.
"The Revolutionary War with Great Brittain Comminced the 19th of April 1775, By the British troops firing on Some Militia at Lexeton, Concord &c which was followed by raising an army for the defence of the country. I entered the Service in the capacity of Lt Col in a Regement commanded by Col David Brewer, and continued in Service to the close of the war"
1775 Commissioned Lieutenant Colonel of the 9th Regiment in the Army of the United Colonies.
1776 Appointed Military Engineer [Responsible for fortifications at Sewall's Point, Providence, New Port, Dorchester Heights, Long Island and West Point.
1776 Commissioned Colonel of the 5th Massachusetts Regiment in the Army of the United States.
1783 Commissioned Brigadier General in the Army of the United States.
1785 Appointed Superintendent of the Survey of Eastern Lands, Massachusetts.
1785 Appointed Member of the Committee for the Sale of Eastern Lands, Massachusetts.
1785 Appointed Surveyor of Western Lands under the Ordinance of 1785.
"January 10th 1786 issued public information to all officers, & Soldiers & other good citizens disposed to become adveturers in the Ohio country, inviting those residing in Massachusetts to meet at Boston on the first day of March, for the purpos of forming an association by the name of the Ohio Company"
1786 Delegates including Rufus Putnam, Benjamin Tupper, Samuel Holden Parsons and Manasseh Cutler meeting at the Bunch-of-Grapes tavern formed the Ohio Company of Associates.
1786 Appointed Commissioner to the Penobscot Indians, Massachusetts.
1787 Appointed Justice of the Peace, Massachusetts.
1787 Elected Member of the General Assembly of Massachusetts.
"November 23d 1787 the Director of the ohio company this day appointed me Superintendent of all the business, relateing to the comincment of a Settlement of there Lands in the territory Northwest of the river Ohio the people to go forward in the company employ under my direction . . ."
"Major Haffield White conducted the first party which Started from Danvers, First of December the other party were appointed to randevoz at Hartford where I ment them on the first day of January 1788. From Hartford I was under the necessity of going by New york, and this party moved forward, conducted by Col Sproat"
"January 24th I joined the party at Lincolns Inn . . ."
"April 1st 1788 having compleated our Boats, and Lade in Stores we left Sumrells Ferry on the yahioany for the mouth Muskingum river and arrived there on the Seventh. Landing on the upper point where we pitched our Camp among the trees, and in a few days comminced the Survey of the Town of Marietta as well as the eight acre Lots, nor was a preparation for a place of Defence neglected . . . I was fully persuaided that the Indians would not be peacible very Long, hence the propriety of imediately erecting a cover for the Emigrents who were Soon expected."
1788 Commissioned Justice of the Peace and of the Quorum, Washington County, Northwest Territory.
1788 Commissioned Judge of Probate, Washington County, Northwest Territory.
"I left Marietta in July 1789, intending not to return again untill I brought on my family, but in the winter of 1790 I was with Docter Cutler detained in Newe york on the Companys business . . . . . . I again left the Settlement in the month of June, and returned with my family the fifth of November"
1790 Commissioned Judge of the General Court of the Northwest Territory.
1792 Commissioned Brigadier General in the Army of the United States.
"5th of May 1792 I was appointed Brigadier in the army . . . . In a few days after I recived this appointment I recived my instructions from the Secretary of war the first object of which was "to attempt to be present at the General Council of the hostile Indians about to be held on the Miami river of Lake Erie in order to convince the Said Indians of the humain dispositions of the United States, and there by to make a truce or peace with them"."
1796 Commissioned the first Surveyor General of the United States, serving from October 1, 1796 to 1803.
"But the Last & best gift I recived from President Washington was anounced in a Letter from Mr Secretary Pickering enclosing a Commission of Surveyor General of the United States, bearing date the First day of october 1796"
1800 Master the American Union Lodge No. 1 Free and Accepted Masons.
1801 Appointed Trustee of Ohio University.
1802 Elected Member of the First Ohio Constitutional Convention.
1804 Master the American Union Lodge No. 1 Free and Accepted Masons.
1805 Master the American Union Lodge No. 1 Free and Accepted Masons.
Brigadier General Rufus Putnam is buried in Mound Cemetery, Marietta, Ohio. The inscription of his original marble gravestone now housed at Campus Martius Museum reads: GEN RUFUS PUTNAM Died May 4 1824 In the 87 Year of his Age. The inscription of the mid-1880's granite Putnam Family Moument reads: GEN RUFUS PUTNAM A Revolutionary Officer And The Leader Of The Colony Which Made The First Settlement In The Territory Of The Northwest At Marietta April 7, 1788. Born April 9, 1738 Died May 4, 1824.
Sources

1 MEMOIRS OF RUFUS PUTNAM.
Wikipedia: Rufus Putnam
find a grave
Source: S00023 Title: U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970 Publication: Name: Ancestry.com. U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.; Repository: #R00001 NOTEU.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970 (Ancestry.com. U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.), Source Medium: (null) CONT _APID: 1,2204::0 CONT .
Repository: R00001 Name: Ancestry.com Address: E-Mail Address: Phone Number:
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Says in March 1754 he was apprenticed to Daniel Matthews of Brookfield to the Millwrights trade. Was this the husband of his sister Huldah. She married Daniel Matthews 13 Mar 1754. Daniel's father was also a Daniel Matthews but it seems more possible that he was apprenticed to his brother-in-law. Check this out.
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From "Reminiscences of Worcester" which is in digital files
p 93
One branch of the descendants of the first Thomas, born in England in 1616, who had three sons, Sergeant Thomas, Dea. Edward, and Joseph, settled in Sutton, and of these, the distiguished Maj. Gen. Rufus Putnam, born in Sutton in 1738, is the grandson of Dea. Edward and Mary (Holton) Putnam, and son of Elisha Putnam, the latter being born in Salem Nov. 3, 1685.
p 94
"Old Put's" (Israel) distinguished relative, Gen. Rufus Putnam, also a revolutionary hero, was a millwright by trade, but before attaining his majority, he in 1756 enlisted in the war against the French, rising to the rank of ensign. After the was he settled in Brookfield, working at his trade as well as farming. In 1773 he went on an expedition to the newly created Province of West Florida, (afterwards Louisiana.) In 1775, he entered into the Continental service as Lieut. Colonel, in 1776 was appointed engineer with the rank of Colonel, and in 1777 commanded a regiment in the old Massachusetts line. He constructed the fortifications at West Point, and Jan 7, 1783, was commissioned Brigadier General. Before retiring from the service at the return of peace, he removed his family from Brookfield to Rutland, at which latter place he purchased in 1781 and afterwards resided upon the confiscated estate of Daniel Murray, (son of the noted tory, Col John Murray,) comprising about two hundred acres of land located half a mile west of the meeting house on the north side of the county road to Oakham. This estate was bounded on the east and west by the confiscated lands of Col. John Murray, who was before the Revolution the wealthiest and most extensive land owner in that town, his residence (as well as the larger portion of his estate,) being on the south side of the road nearly opposite that of his son Daniel, whose home he probably built for him on a portion of the estate originally belonging to the father. The cellar hole of the old mansion of the distinguished royalist, Col John, torn down about a dozen years ago, after the old homestead had passed through several owners, still remains as a memento of the past. The residence of his son Daniel, on the other side of the road, afterwards owned and occupied by Gen. Putnam, is still standing, it having been for more than three-quarters of a century owned and occupied by Benjamin Mead and his son the late Dea. William Mead.

But, meritorious and noteworthy as were his military achievements and career, Gen Rufus Putnam's greatest renown is of a civic nature, arising from his being the organiser of the great Northwest Territory, entitling him to the cognomen of being the "father of the Western Country." During the years 1784 and 1785, while a member of the State Legislature from Rutland, he was actively engaged in unsuccessful efforts to secure from Congress an appropriation of land in what was then called the "Great Northwest Territory", (comprising all the present States north of the Ohio river between Pennsylvania and the Mississippi river,) for the benefit of those who had served during the revolutionary war. On the night of Jan 9, 1786, he held a conference at his residence in Rutland, with friends associated with him in the enterprise, who had just returned from an extended tour into that then distant region, bringing favorable reports of the prospects of the undertaking, the beauty and fertility of the land, etc., the result of which conference , lasting nearly all night, was, the abandonment of all hope of aid from Congress, and an effort which terminated successfully through associated individual effort, under the lead of Gen. Putnam, in giving existence to the now great State of Ohio, and other States since organized from the territory alluded to. A public notice was immediately issued, addressed to officers and soldiers and other good citizens to meet in Boston by delegates to be chosen in the several counties, on the first day of March, 1786, for the purpose of forming an association to be called the "Ohio Company, whose purpose shall be the purchase of lands in the Western Country, and a settlement thereon."

This convention was held accordingly, Gen Putnam presiding, when the "Ohio Company" was formed, and the direction of its affairs was entrusted to him. After two years of energetic and successful effort, resulting in the purchase of one million and a half acres of government land by the company, Putnam planted himself with fifty other persons, many of them from Rutland, on the 7th of April, 1788, in the wilderness on the west bank of the Ohio river, at the mouth of the Muskinggum, and they called their settlement Marietta, from Marie Antoinette of France. This was the germ, not only of the great State of Ohio, which Putnam lived to see a flourishing State having seventy counties and 70,000 inhabitants, but also of the numerous States since organized in that direction.

In 1786, Putnam was appointed by Washington Judge of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territory, in 1791 he was appointed Brigadier General of the United States Army under Wayne and commissioned to make a treaty with the Indians on the Wabash. In 1795 he was appointed by President Washington Surveyor General of the United States lands, which position he held until he was removed by Jefferson in 1803. He was a member of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the State of Ohio in 1802. With others, in 1812, he formed the first Bible Society organized west of the Alleghany Mountains, and in Sabbath School and missionary enterprises he was deeply interested.

General Rufus Putnam married Jan 10, 1765, Persis Rice, daughter of Zebulon and Abigail Rice of Westborough, the General being then a resident of Brookfield. His wife, Persis, was granddaughter of Thomas Rice of Marlborough, the latter being the oldest brother of Jonas and Gershom Rice, the first permanent settlers in Worcester. He died at his home in Marietta, Ohio, May 1, 1824, after a residence there of thirty-six years, aged 86, leaving several children and many grandchildren, of whom one son, William Rufus Putnam, died at Marietta, Jan. 1, 1855, aged 85.

Gen. Putnam at his decease was the oldest surviving general officer of the Revolution, except Lafayette. While a resident of Rutland, besides his more enlarged duties, he served as constable, collector of taxes, selectman, and in other local positions. He sold his estate in Rutland in 1792 to Stephen Sibley of Sutton, and the latter in 1796 sold it to Benjamin Mead, Jr., father of the late Dea. William Mead, who died there in 1874, aged 84, the estate being nowowned and occupied by his son, Elias Mead. The old mamsion still remains very much the same as it was, the papering of some rooms being the same put on by Gen. Putnam himself.

When the magnificent new State House for Ohio, at Columbus was built, some doors were taken from what was then supposed to be the residence of Gen. Putnam in Rutland, to form a part of the new structure, as a memorial of the distinguished founder of that State; but by a sad mistake the doors of the old mansion of Col. John Murray, torn down at that time, were taken instead of those from the former residence of Gen. Putnam. But the old hero has a more enduring memorial in history, and in the hearts of the people of the great north west, than could be embodied inphysical shape.

At the time of the emmigration of Gen. Putnam with his family and others from New Englnad to Ohio in 1788, the route and mode of travel were more circuitous and difficult than at present, there being no railroad, stage or steamboat, and in numerous instances not even a cart path through the wilderness, ox-wagons constituting the most rapid as well as commodious facilities for getting from one part of the country to another. The emigrants from Rutland, after bidding adieu to their olf homes, former pleasant associations, and kind friends, started on their long pilgrimage to a then uncultivated and vast wilderness, some on foot, some in wagons, and the more feeble and delicate on horseback, weeks and even months, it is
said, being occupied in the journey. Gen. Putnam's family consisted of himself and wife Persis, their children Elisabeth Persis, Abigail, Susanna, Wm. Rufus, Edwin, Kate, and Patty, with several domestics. Among those who went with them, was ensign Christopher Burlingame, (great grandfather of the late Hon. Anson Burlingame,) then a hatter in Rutland, who married the General's daughter Susanna. Before Gen. Putnam would give his consent to the union, the suitor for his daughter's hand was required to pledge himself that he would go with him to Ohio, They were accordingly married Dec 13, 1787, and had several children in Ohio.

Another of the emigrants from Rutland, Willia, son of Lt. Wm Browning, married the General's daughter Abigail. Among others who emigrated from Rutland with their families to join Gen. Putnam, in Marietta, at this time, were Col. Silas Bent, Major Nathan Goodall, Capt. Benjamin Miles, Jr, (who married a daughter of Rev. Joseph Buckminster,) and Israel Stone. The last naed, who married Lydia Barret, emigrated with ten children, among whom was the late Col. Augustus Stone of Harmer, Ohio, who died soe ten years since at the advanced age of 86. The emigrants from Rutland took with them some yellow cattle, still known in Marietta under the name of the "Rutland breed."

General Rufus Putnam's father, Elisha, who emigrated from Salem to Sutton with him, had six brothers and two sisters, as follows: 1st, Edward, born April 29,, 1682; 2d, Holyoke, born Sept. 28, 1683; 3d, Elisha, (father of Gen Rufus,) born Nov 3, 1685; 4th, Joseph, born Nov 1, 1687; 5th, Mary, born Aug 14, 1689; 6th, Prudence, born Jan 25, 1692; 7th Nehemiah, born Dec 20, 1693; 8th, Ezra, born April 29, 1696; 9th, Isaac, born Mar 14, 1698. Of these children of Dea. Edward Putnam, and grandchildren of the first Thomas, one or more of whom emigrated with their brother Elisha to Sutton, the oldest, Edward, Jr., born in Salem in 1682 was great grandfather of the present Sibley, Jason, Salmon, Philander, Darius, Alexander, and Chas, V. Putnam of Worcester, and ancestor of numerous others living here. This second Edward Putnam, (oldest son of Dea. Edward) had seven sons: John, Stephen, Archelaus, David, Caleb, Peter, and Asa. Of these John was grandfather of Alexander and Charles V; Archelaus was grandfather of Jason, Sibley, and Darius, and David was grandfather of Salmon and Philander. John had four sons: John, Jr, Stephen, Charles and Joseph, the latter father of Alexander and Charles V. Archelaus had three sons: Aaron, born July 13, 1762, father of Jason and Sibley; Arhelaus, Jr, born Aug 17, 1768; Andrew, born Sept, 26, 1773, father of Darius. David;s son, Cyrus Putnam, had 5 sons: David, Horace, Philander, Salmon and Leander. Of these, Capt Salmon Putnam has four children residents here: Otis E. Putna, of the firm of Barnard, Sumner, & Co; Samuel H Putnam, of the firm of Putnam & Davis; Mary L Putnam; and Persis Jane who married the late F.L.R. Coes. The sons of Philander Putnam, all resident here, are: W T, Marcus M, Edward F, and George A Putnam.

Gen. Rufus Putnam's cousin, Isaac Putnam, who settled in that part of Sutton afterwards forming a part of Auburn, had a son, Isaac Putnam, Jr, born in 1762, who came from Auburn to Worcester and married Jan 18, 1784, Martha Adams, daughter of Charles and Abigail Adams, and granddaughter of Aaron Adams, who was on the first board of town officiers in Worcester in 1722. Isaac, Jr and Martha (Adams) Putna, who resided on the corner of Belmont and Admas streets, (on the estate now owned and occupied by their great-grandsons. Samuel and Henry Putnam,) had ten children, as follows: 1st, Sally (Baird), born in 1785, and died in 1850; 2d, Ebenezer, born in 1787, died in 18848; 3d, Joel, born in 1789, died in 1858; 4th William, born in 1790, and died in 1796; 5th Charles, born in 1792, died in 1840; 6th Samuel, (of the firm of Putnam & Converse, quarriers on Millstone Hill,) born in 1794, died Sept 26, 1861; 7th Aaron, born in 1797, died in 1800; 8th, William, born in 1799, died in 1822; 9th Martha, born in 1801, died in 1865; Mary (Blackman), born in 1805, died in 1860.

Samuel Putnam, who died in 1861, married in 1820, Rebecca, daughter of Amos Flagg, and they had three sons, the present William, Samuel and Henry Putnam, and four daughters.

Joel Putnam, who died in 1858, married first, Thankful M Salter of Shrewsbury, and second, Ruth Parmenter of Winchendon. Of their children, Isaac died in 1858 aged 43, and one daughter married S.F. Goss.

Jonathan R Putnam who came to Worcester from New England Village, Grafton, nearly fifty years ago, and married in 1834 a sister of the late Ebenezer H and George Bowen, is son of John Putnam, and grandson of Zadock Putnam, who emigrated from Salem to Grafton one hundred years ago or more.

Charles L Putnam, President of the Five Cents Savings Bank, who came to Worcester nearly thirty years ago, and his brother Rev. John J Putnam, are natives of Chesterfield, NH, their father, John Putnam, being son of Gen Rufus Putnam's brother Stephen, consequently Charles L and John J bear the relationship of grand-nephews t the general. Chas L Putnam's only daughter is wife of Col. John D Washburn.

Rev Dr, Alfred Porter Putnam of Brooklyn, NY, and his brother Judge Arthur Alwyn Putnam of Blackstone, in this county, both natives of Salem, are sons of Elias Putna, grandsons of Israel (not the general), and great grandsons of Edmund Putnam, one of the pioneer Universalists in this country, who held the first Universalist meeting in the old brick School house in Putnamville, Salem, more than a century ago.

John Putnam, born in 1765, son of John and artha Putnam of Brooklyn, Ct, and a near relative of Gen. Israel, married in 1791 Philura Curtis, and emigrated from Brooklyn to Hinsdale, Mass, where John and Philura (Curtis) Putnam had Henry, Martha, Mary, and Sophia Putnam. Of these, Sophia Putnam, born Oct 23, 1797, married Jan 27, 1820, Daniel Nichols, they being parents of Henry Putnam Nichols of Worcester, for the last thirty-five years agent of the Western and Boston and Albany Railroad. Sophia's oldest sister, Martha, married in 1810 George W McElwain, they being parents of Mrs. Charles Wright of Hinsdale, Mary Putnam married in 1815, Dr John Kittridge, and Henry married in 1825, Martha Boardman.

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1898 - Old Rutland, Massachusetts - The Cradle of Ohio by Edwin D. Mead

The Old South Historical Society in Boston inaugurated in 1896 the custom of annual historical pilgrimages. It had learned from Parkman and Motley and Irving how vital and vivid history is made by visits to the scenes of history. Its pilgrimages must be short to places near home; but the good places to visit in New England are many. Great numbers of people, young and old, join in the pilgrimages. Six hundred went to the beautiful Whittier places beside the Merrimac, the second year; and as many the third year to the King Philip country, on Narragansett Bay.

The first year's pilgrimage was to old Rutland, Massachusetts, "the cradle of Ohio." A hundred of the young people went on the train from Boston, on that bright July day; and when they had climbed to the little village on the hill, and swept their eyes over the great expanse of country round about Wachusett and away to Monadnock, and strolled down to the old Rufus Putnam house, by whose fireside the settlement of Marietta was planned, a hundred more people had come from the surrounding villages; and a memorable little celebration was that under the maples after the luncheon, with the dozen energetic speeches from the young men and the older ones. It was a fine inauguration of the Old South pilgrimages, and woke many people to the great possibilities of the historical pilgrimage as an educational factor.

Ten years before, there was hardly a man in Massachusetts who ever thought of Rutland as a historical town. The people of Princeton and Paxton and Hubbardston and Oakham looked across to the little village on the hill from their villages on the hills, and they did not think of it; the people of Worcester drove up of a Sunday to get a dinner at the old village tavern, and they did not think of it; the Amherst College boys and the Smith College girls rode past on the Central Massachusetts road, at the foot of the hill, on their way to Boston, and heard "Rutland!" called, but they thought nothing of history; and in Boston the last place to which people would have thought of arranging a historical pilgrimage was this same Rutland.

Yet when the Old South young people went there on their first pilgrimage, Rutland had already become a name almost as familiar in our homes as Salem or Sudbury or Deerfield. The Old South young people themselves had been led to think very much about it. In 1893, the year of the World's Fair at Chicago, the great capital of the great West, a place undreamed of a hundred years before, when Rutland was witnessing its one world historical event, the Old South lectures were devoted to "The Opening of the West." Two of the eight lectures were upon "The Northwest Territory and the Ordinance of 1787" and "Marietta and the Western Reserve"; two of the leaflets issued in connection were Manasseh Cutler's Description of Ohio in 1787 and Garfield's address on The Northwest Territory and the Western Reserve; and one of the subjects set for the Old South essays was "The Part Taken by Massachusetts Men in Connection with the Ordinance of 1787." These studies first kindled the imaginations of hundreds of young people and first roused them to the consciousness that westward expansion had been the great fact in our history from the time of the Revolution to the time of the Civil War; that New England had had a controlling part in this great movement, which, by successive waves, has reached Ohio, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, Oregon, so that there is more good New England blood today west of the Hudson than there is east of it; and that this movement, which has transformed the United States from the little strip along the Atlantic coast which fought for independence to the great nation which stretches now from sea to sea, began at the old town of Rutland, Massachusetts. This Rutland on the hill is the cradle of Ohio, the cradle of the West.

It was not, by any means, these Boston lectures on "The Opening of the West" which reawakened Massachusetts and the country to the forgotten historical significance of old Rutland. That awakening was done by Senator Hoar, in his great oration at the Marietta centennial, in 1888. Senator Hoar's oration did not indeed awaken Massachusetts to the great part taken by Massachusetts. men in connection with the Ordinance of 1787, or the part of New England in the settlement and shaping of the West. No awakening to these things was necessary. There is no New England household which has not kindred households in the West, ever in close communication with the old home; and the momentous significance of the Ordinance of 1787, and the decisive part taken by Massachusetts statesmen in securing it, the Massachusetts historian and orator were never likely to let the people forget

"At the foundation of the constitution of these new Northwestern States," said Daniel Webster in his great reply to Hayne, "lies the celebrated Ordinance of 1787. We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon and Lycurgus; but I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of more distinct, marked and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787. That instrument was drawn by Nathan Dane, a citizen of Massachusetts; and certainly it has happened to few men to be the authors of a political measure of more large and enduring consequence. It fixed forever the character of the population in the vast regions northwest of the Ohio, by excluding from them involuntary servitude. It impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to sustain any other than free men. It laid the interdict against personal servitude, in original compact, not only deeper than all local law, but deeper also than all local constitutions. We see its consequences at this moment, and we shall never cease to see them, perhaps, while the Ohio shall flow."

Mr. Hoar spoke as strongly of the Ordinance, in his Marietta oration. "The Ordinance of 1787 belongs with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; it is one of the three title deeds of American constitutional liberty." But the chief merit of his oration was not the new emphasis with which he said what Webster had said, but the picturesqueness and the power with which he brought the men and the events of that great period of the opening of the West home to the imagination. The oration was especially memorable for the manner in which it set Rufus Putnam, the man of action, the head of the Ohio Company, the leader of the Marietta colony, in the centre of the story, and made us see old Rutland as the cradle of the movement.

Complete religious liberty, the public support of schools, and the prohibition forever of slavery, these were what the Ordinance of 1787 secured for the Northwest. "When older States or nations," said Mr. Hoar, "where the chains of human bondage have been broken, shall utter the proud boast, ' With a great sum obtained I this freedom,' each sister of this imperial group, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin - may lift her queenly head with the yet prouder answer, 'But I was free born.'" The moment of this antislavery article of the Ordinance, in view of the course of our national history during the century that has followed, it would not be possible to overstate. When the great test of civil war came, to settle of what sort this republic should be, who dare contemplate the result had these five States been slave States and not free!

Massachusetts makes no false or exclusive claims of credit for the Ordinance of 1787. She does not forget the services of William Grayson, nor those of Richard Henry Lee. She does not forget Thomas Jefferson.(1)

The names of Nathan Dane, Rufus Putnam, Rufus King, Timothy Pickering and Manasseh Cutler are names of the greatest moment in the history of the West. No other group of men did so much as these Massachusetts men to determine what the great West should be, by securing the right organization and institutions for the Northwest Territory and by securing at the beginning the right kind of settlers for Ohio.

It was really Manasseh Cutler who did most at the final decisive moment to secure the adoption of the clause in the great Ordinance which forever dedicated the Northwest to freedom. Of all these Massachusetts men he was by far the most interesting personality; and of all revelations of the inner character of that critical period, none is more interesting or valuable than that given by his Life and Leiters. It is to be remembered too that the first company of men for Marietta, Cutler urged Adelphia as the right name for the town started from Manasseh Cutler's own home in Ipswich, joining others at Danvers, December 3, 1787, almost a month before the Rutland farmers left to join Putnam at Hartford. For the shrine of Manasseh Cutler is not at Rutland, but at Hamilton, which was a part of Ipswich. The home of Nathan Dane was Beverly. "It happened," said Edward Everett Hale, at the Marietta centennial, "that it was Manasseh Cutler who was to be the one who should call upon that Continental Congress to do the duty which they had pushed aside for five or six years. It happened that this diplomatist succeeded in doing in four days what had not been done in four years before. What was the weight which Manasseh Cutler threw into the scale ? It was not wealth; it was not the armor of the old time; it was simply the fact, known to all men, that the men of New England would not emigrate into any region where labor and its honest recompense is dishonorable. The New England men will not go where it is not honorable to do an honest day's work, and for that honest day's work to claim an honest recompense. They never have done it, and they never will do it; and it was that potent fact, known to all men, that Manasseh Cutler had to urge in his private conversation and in his diplomatic work. When he said, 'I am going away from New York, and my constituents are not going to do this thing,' he meant exactly what he said. They were not going to any place where labor was dishonorable, and where workmen were not recognized as freemen. If they had not taken his promises, they would not have come here; they would have gone to the Holland Company's lands in New York, or where Massachusetts was begging them to go, into the valley of the Penobscot or the Kennebec."

Senator Hoar, in his oration, said of Manasseh Cutler:

"He was probably the fittest man on the continent, except Franklin, for a mission of delicate diplomacy. It was said just now that Putnam was a man after Washington's pattern and after Washington's own heart. Cutler was a man after Franklin's pattern and after Franklin's own heart. He was the most learned naturalist in America, as Franklin was the greatest master in physical science. He was a man of consummate prudence in speech and conduct; of courtly manners; a favorite in the drawing room and in the camp; with a wide circle of friends and correspondents among the most famous men of his time. During his brief service in Congress, he made a speech on the judicial system, in x803, which shows his profound mastery of constitutional principles. It now fell to his lot to conduct a negotiation second only in importance to that which Franklin conducted with France in 1778. Never was ambassador crowned with success more rapid or more complete."

But here, in old Rutland, it is not with Manasseh Cutler that we are concerned, but with Rufus Putnam. Rufus Putnam was the head of the Ohio Company, and the leader in the actual settlement of the new Territory. It was with Putnam that Manasseh Cutler chiefly conferred concerning the proposed Ohio colony. He left Boston for New York, on his important mission, on the evening of June 25, 1787, and on that day he records in his diary: "I conversed with General Putnam, and settled the principles on which I am to contract with Congress for lands on account of the Ohio Company." Of Rufus Putnam, Senator Hoar said in his oration, after his tributes to Varnum, Meigs, Parsons, Tupper and the rest:

"But what can be said which shall be adequate to the worth of him who was the originator, inspirer, leader, and guide of the Ohio settlement from the time when he first conceived it, in the closing days of the Revolution, until Ohio took her place in the Union as a free State in the summer of 1803? Every one of that honorable body would have felt it as a personal wrong had he been told that the foremost honors of this occasion would not be given to Rufus Putnam. Lossing calls him the father of Ohio.' Burnet says, ' He was regarded as their principal chief and leader.' He was chosen the superintendent at the meeting of the Ohio Company in Boston, November 21, 1787, 'to be obeyed and respected accordingly.' The agents of the company, when they voted in 1780 ' that the 7th of April be forever observed as a public festival,' speak of it as 'the day when General Putnam commenced the settlement in this country.' Harris dedicates the documents collected in his appendix to Rufus Putnam, 'the founder and father of the State.' He was a man after Washington's own pattern and after Washington's own heart; of the blood and near kindred of Israel Putnam, the man who dared to lead where any man dared to follow.'"

Mr. Hoar recounts the great services of Putnam during the Revolution, beginning with his brilliant success in the fortification of Dorchester Heights:

"We take no leaf from the pure chaplet of Washington's fame when we say that the success of the first great military operation of the Revolution was due to Rufus Putnam."

But it was not Senator Hoar's task to narrate the military services of General Putnam.'

"We have to do," he said, "only with the entrenchments constructed under the command of this great engineer for the constitutional fortress of American liberty. Putnam removed his family to Rutland, Worcester County, Mass., early in 1780. His house is yet standing, about ten miles from the birthplace of the grandfather of President Garfield. He himself returned to Rutland when the war was over. He had the noble public spirit of his day, to which no duty seemed trifling or obscure. For five years he tilled his farm and accepted and performed the public offices to which his neighbors called him. He was representative to the General Court, selectman, constable, tax collector and committee to lay out school lots for the town; State surveyor, commissioner to treat with the Penobscot Indians and volunteer in putting down Shays's Rebellion. He was one of the founders and first trustees of Leicester Academy, and, with his family of eight children, gave from his modest means a hundred pounds toward its endowment. But he had larger plans in mind. 'The town constable of Rutland was planning an empire."

Rufus Putnam was born in Sutton, Massachusetts, April 9, 1738, just fifty years before he founded Marietta, where he died May a, 1824. He was a cousin of General Putnam. Early in life he was a millwright and a farmer; but he studied mathematics, surveying and engineering after distinguished service in the old French war and became our leading engineer during the Revolution, and an able officer in many campaigns. He first planned the Ohio settlement, and at the outset made it a distinct condition that there should be no slavery in the territory. Five years after the founding of Marietta, Putnam was made Surveyor General of the United States; and his services in Ohio until the time of his death were of high importance.

Putnam's chief counsellor in his design at the first was Washington, whose part altogether in the opening of the West was so noteworthy. Mr. Hoar tells of the correspondence between Putnam and Washington, and follows the interesting history to the organization of the Ohio Company, at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston, in 1787, and the departure of the Massachusetts emigrants at the end of the next year.

"Putnam went out from his simple house in Rutland to dwell no more in his native Massachusetts. It is a plain, wooden dwelling, perhaps a little better than the average of the farmers' houses of New England of that day; yet about which of Europe's palaces do holier memories cling! Honor and fame, and freedom and empire, and the faith of America went with him as he crossed the threshold."

To Rutland, as one who loved the old town and its history has well said, "belongs the honor of having carried into action the Ordinance of 1787. Standing on Rutland hill, and looking around the immense basin of which it forms the centre, it is with conscious pride that one looks upon the old landmarks and calls up to the imagination the strong and brave and true men whose traditions have permeated the soil and left their marks in the civilization which has been the type for the development of the whole of the great Northwest." For this old town on the hilltop was veritably "the cradle of Ohio." Here was first effectually heard that potent invitation and command, so significant in the history of this country in these hundred years, "Go West!" This town incarnates and represents as no other the spirit of the mighty movement which during the century has extended New England all through the great West.

As early as 1783, about the time of the breaking up of the army at Newburgh on the Hudson, General Putnam and nearly three hundred army officers had proposed to form a new State beyond the Ohio, and Washington warmly endorsed their memorial to Congress asking for a grant of land; but the plan miscarried. As soon as the Ordinance was passed, the Ohio Company, of which Putnam was the president, bought from the government five or six million acres, and the first great movement of emigration west of the Ohio at once began. Within a year following the organization of the territory, twenty thousand people became settlers upon the banks of the Ohio. But the Pilgrim Fathers of the thousands and the millions, the pioneers to whom belongs the praise, were the forty or fifty farmers who from old Rutland pushed on with Putnam through the snows of Connecticut and Pennsylvania, coming to Pittsburgh just as the spring of 1788 came, and dropping down the river to Marietta in the little boat which they had named, by a beautiful fatality, the Mayflower. "Forever honored be Marietta as another Plymouth!"

The men who first settled the Northwest Territory, as President Hayes, following Mr. Hoar at Marietta, well called it, "the most fortunate colonization that ever occurred on earth," and who set the seal of their character and institutions upon it, were of the best blood of New England.

" Look for a moment," said Mr. Hoar, "at the forty eight men who came here a hundred years ago to found the first American civil government whose jurisdiction did not touch tide water. See what manner of men they were; in what school they had been trained; what traditions they had inherited. I think that you must agree that of all the men who ever lived on earth fit to perform ' that ancient, primitive and heroical work,' the founding of a State, they were the fittest."

Here we remember too the words of Washington.

"No colony in America," said Washington, the warm friend of Putnam, who was deeply concerned that the development of the West should begin in the right way, in the hands of the right men, "was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at the Muskingum. Information, property and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community."

We honor old Rutland not only because she sent men to open the West, but because she sent her best, because she pitched the tone for the great West high.

But Rutland is not only "the cradle of Ohio," preeminent as that distinction is in her history. She also - like the other towns on the hills round about her, and like every good old New England town - has her long line of simple local annals, well worthy the attention of the summer visitor from Boston or Chicago. Happy are you if you hear them all from the lips of one or another of the local antiquarians, as you ride with him through the fields to Muschopauge Pond, or along the Princeton road to Wachusett, or over Paxton way to see the lot which Senator Hoar has bought on the top of Asnebumskit Hill, perhaps finding the Senator himself on the hill, as we did, where he could see Worcester in one direction, and in the other, Rutland.

I remember well the crisp September night when I first saw Rutland, with the new moon in the clear sky, and the evening star. I remember that the man who drove me up from the little station to the big hotel on the hill, while I filled my lungs with Rutland air, proved to be the hotel proprietor himself, and, which was much better, proved - and proved it much more the next day - to be the very prince of local antiquarians. He had himself written a history of Rutland for a history of Worcester County, and there was nothing that he did not know. If there was anything, then the good village minister, he has been to Marietta since, and is president of the Rutland Historical Society, had read it in some book; or the town clerk knew it; or Mr. Miles remembered it, who was to Rutland born, and whose memory was good. So in the dozen pleasant visits which I have made to Rutland since, I have not only taken mine ease with the benevolent boniface, but have taken many history lessons on the broad piazzas and the hills. 

The boniface will tell you, sitting in the corner looking toward Wachusett, how, in 1686, Joseph Trask, alias Pugastion, of Pennicook; Job, alias Pompamamay, of Natick; Simon Pitican, alias Wananapan, of Wamassick; Sassawannow, of Natick, and another - Indians who claimed to be lords of the soil - gave a deed to Henry Willard and Joseph Rowlandson and Benjamin Willard and others, for £23 of the then currency, of a certain tract of land twelve miles square, the name in general being Naquag, the south corner butting upon Muschopauge Pond, and running north to Quanitick and to Wauchatopick, and so running upon great Wachusett, etc. Upon the petition, he will tell you, of the sons and grandsons of Major Simon 'Willard, of Lancaster, deceased that famous Major Willard who went to relieve Brookfield when beset by the Indians and others; the General Court in 1713 confirmed these lands to these petitioners, "provided that within seven years there be sixty families settled thereon, and sufficient lands reserved for the use of a gospel ministry and schools, except what part thereof the Hon. Samuel Sewall, Esq., hath already purchased, the town to be called Rutland, and to lye to the county of Middlesex." The grant was about one eighth of the present Worcester County, comprising almost all the towns round about. When the new Worcester County was incorporated, Rutland failed of becoming the shire town, instead of Worcester, by only one vote, and that vote, they say in Rutland, was bought by a base bribe. The antiquarian taverner will point his spy glass toward Barre for you, and tell you it was named after our good friend in the House of Commons in the Stamp Act days; toward Petersham hill, back of it, where John Fiske spends his summers, and tell you about Shays' Rebellion; toward Hubbardston, and tell you it was named for an old speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; toward Princeton, and tell you it perpetuates the memory of Thomas Prince, the famous old pastor of the Old South Church in Boston, founder of the Prince Library; toward Paxton, and tell you about Charles Paxton, who was something or other; toward Oakham, and tell you something else. He will tell you that Holden is so called after that same family whose name is also honored in Holden Chapel at Harvard College; and he will probably point to Shrewsbury, on the hill away beyond Holden, and talk about General Artemas Ward, whose old home and grave are there.

He will tell about the first settlers of Rutland, respectable folk from Boston and Concord and other places, and how many immigrants from Ireland there were, with their church membership papers in their pockets. He will tell you of Judge Sewall's sum of a thousand acres in the north part of the town, and of his gift of the sacramental vesWessels the church; of the five hundred acres granted to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company; of how the road through the village was laid out ten rods wide, and so remains unto this dayy; of the call to the "able, learned, orthodox minister," Joseph Willard, in 1721, and how he was "cut off by the Indians "-shot in the field north of the meeting house, just before the insinstallationsy, so that Thomas Frink, "an abla and learned, orthodox and pious person," was called instead. Presently there was "a coolness affection in some of the brethren" towards Mr. Frink, because two fifths of the church members were Presbyterians, over against three fifths Congregationalists, and "contrary to his advice and admonition communed with the Presbyterians in other towns." The upshot was a split, and a Presbyterian church in the west part of the town. These Rutland Presbyterians seem to have come from Ireland, they were of the same sort as those who founded Londonderry, New Hampshire just before; and some of them were so tenacious of their own ordinances that they carried their infants in their arms on horseback as far as Pelham to have them baptized in good Presbyterian form.

Rutland had her minute men, and fifty of them were at Bunker Hill. She had some hot town meetings between the Stamp Act time and Lexington, and passed ringing resolutions and some stiff instructions to Colonel Murray, her representative to the General Court, whom more and more she distrusted, and who, when the final pinch came, declared himself a Tory out and out, and fled to Nova Scotia, leaving Rutland "by a back road," to avoid a committee of the whole, which was on its way to visit him.

To tell the truth, this Tory Colonel, John Murray, must have been the most interesting figure ever associated with old Rutland, save General Rufus Putnam himself; and, curiously enough, the Putnam place had belonged first to Murray, the house being built by him for one of his married daughters, all of Murray's lands and goods being confiscated, and this house falling into Putnam's hands in 1780 or 1782, probably at a very low figure.

He was not John Murray when he came to Rutland, but John McMorrah. He came from Ireland with John and Elizabeth McClanathan, Martha Shaw and others, his mother dying on the passage. He was not only penniless when he set his foot on the American shore, but in debt for his passage. "For a short time," says the chronicle, "he tried manual labor; but he was too lazy to work, and to beg ashamed." He found a friend in Andrew Hendery, and began peddling; then he kept a small store, and later bought cattle for the army. Everything seemed to favor him, and he became the richest man that ever lived in Rutland. "He did not forget Elizabeth McClanathan, whom he sailed to America with, but made her his wife." She lies, along with Lucretia Chandler, his second wife, and Deborah Brindley, the third, in the old Rutland graveyard. "He placed horizontally over their graves large handsome stones underpinned with brick, whereon were engraved appropriate inscriptions." He had a large family, seven sons and five daughters; and the oldest son, Alexander, remained loyal to America and to Rutland when his father fled, entering the army and being wounded in the service. Murray became a large landholder and had many tenants; he was the "Squire" of the region. He grew arbitrary and haughty as he grew wealthy, but was popular, until the stormy politics came. "On Representative day," we read, "all his friends that could ride, walk, creep or hobble were at the polls; and it was not his fault if they returned dry." He held every office the people could give him, and represented them twenty years in the General Court. He was a large, fleshy man, and, "when dressed in his regimentals, with his gold bound hat, etc., he made a superb appearance." He lived in style, with black servants and white. "His high company from Boston, Worcester, etc., his office and parade, added to the popularity and splendor of the town. He promoted schools, and for several years gave twenty dollars yearly towards supporting a Latin grammar school." He also gave a clock to the church, which was placed in front of the gallery, and proved himself a thoroughly modern man by inscribing on the clock the words, "A Gift of John Murray, Esq."

All these things your loyal Rutland host will tell you, or read to you out of the old books, where you can read them, and many other things. And he will take you to drive, down past the Putnam place, to the field where a large detachment of Burgoyne's army was quartered after the surrender at Saratoga. The prisoners' barracks stood for half a century, converted to new uses; and the well dug by the soldiers is still shown as, until a few years ago, were the mounds which marked the graves of those who died. Three of the officers fell in love with Rutland girls, and took them back to England as their wives. Yet none of their stories is so romantic as the story of that vagrant Betsy, whose girlhood was passed in a Rutland shanty, and who, after she married in New York the wealthy Frenchman, Stephen Jumel, and was left a widow, then married Aaron Burr.

St. Edmundsbury, in old Suffolk, where Robert Browne first preached independency, has an air so bracing and salubrious that it has been called the Montpellier of England. Old Rutland might well be called the Montpellier of Massachusetts. Indeed, when a few years ago the State of Massachusetts decided to establish a special hospital for consumptives, the authorities asked the opinions of hundreds of physicians and scientific men in all parts of the State as to where was the best place for it, the most healthful and favorable point; and a vast preponderance of opinion was in behalf of Rutland. On the southern slope, therefore, of Rutland's highest hill the fine hospital now stands; and until people outgrow the foolish notion that a State must have all its State institutions within its own borders, until Massachusetts knows that North Carolina is a better place for consumptives than any town of her own, there could not be a wiser choice. The town is so near to Worcester, and even to Boston, that its fine air, broad outlook and big hotel draw to it hundreds of summer visitors; and latterly it has grown enterprising, for which one is a little sorry, and has waterworks and coaching parades.

The central town in Massachusetts, Rutland is also the highest village in the State east of the Connecticut. From the belfry of the village church, from the dooryards of the village people, the eye sweeps an almost boundless horizon, from the Blue Hills to Berkshire and from Monadnock to Connecticut, and the breezes on the summer day whisper of the White Hills and the Atlantic. It is not hard for the imagination to extend the view far beyond New England, to the town on the Muskingum which the prophetic eye of Putnam saw from here, and to the great States beyond, which rose obedient to the effort which began with him; it is not hard to catch messages borne on winds from the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. Just at the foot of the hill, - to the west, as is fitting,- stands the old Rufus Putnam house, the church clock telling the hours above, Wachusett looming beyond the valley, the maples rustling before the door, to the west the sough of the pines. Its oaken timbers are still as sound as when Murray put them in place before the Revolution, each clapboard still intact, the doors the same, the rooms but little altered. Could Putnam return to earth again and to Rutland, he would surely feel himself at home as he passed through the gate.

In 1893, when the enthusiasm reinforced by our Old South lectures on "The Opening of the West" was strong, I wrote these words about the Rufus Putnam house:

"This historic house should belong to the people. It should be insured against every mischance. It should be carefully restored and preserved, and stand through the years, a memorial of Rufus Putnam and the farmers who went out with him to found Ohio, a monument to New England influence and effort in the opening and building of the great West. This room should be a Rufus Putnam room, in which there should be gathered every book and picture and document illustrating Putnam's career; this should be the Ordinance room, sacred to memorials of Manasseh Cutler and all who worked with him to secure the great charter of liberty; this the Marietta room, illustrating the Marietta of the first days and the last, binding mother and daughter together, and becoming the pleasant ground for the interchange of many edifying courtesies. There should be, too, a Rutland room, with its hundred objects illustrating the long history of the town, almost every important chapter of which has been witnessed by this venerable building, with memorials also of the old English Rutland and of the many American Rutlands which look back reverently to the historic Massachusetts town; and a Great West library, on whose shelves should stand the books telling the story of the great oak which has grown from the little acorn planted by Rufus Putnam a hundred years ago. We can think of few memorials which could be established in New England more interesting than this would be. We can think of few which could be established so easily. It is a pleasure to look forward to the day when this shall be accomplished. It is not hard to hear already the voice of Senator Hoar, at the dedication of this Rufus Putnam memorial, delivering the oration in the old Rutland church. Men from the West should be there with men from the East, men from Marietta, from the Western Reserve, from Chicago, from Puget Sound. A score of members of the Antiquarian Society at Worcester should be there. That score could easily make this vision a reality. We commend the thought to these men of Worcester. We commend it to the people of Rutland, who, however the memorial is secured, must be its custodians."

Just a year from the time these words were written, the pleasing plan and prophecy, more fortunate than most such prophecies, began to be fulfilled. It was a memorable meeting in old Rutland on that brilliant October day in 1894. Senator Hoar and seventy five good men and women came from Worcester; and Edward Everett Hale led a zealous company from Boston; and General Walker drove over with his friends from Brookfield, his boyhood home near by, the home, too, of Rufus Putnam before he came to Rutland; and when everybody had roamed over the old Putnam place, and crowded the big hotel dining room for dinner, and then adjourned to the village church, so many people from the town and the country round about had joined that the church never saw many larger gatherings. The address which Senator Hoar gave was full of echoes of his great Marietta oration; and when the other speeches had been made, it was very easy in the enthusiasm to secure pledges for a third of the four thousand dollars necessary to buy the old house and the hundred and fifty acres around it. The rest has since then been almost entirely raised; the house has been put into good condition, and is visited each year by hundreds of pilgrims from the East and the West; and a noteworthy collection of historical memorials has already been made, all under the control of the Rutland Historical Society, which grew out of that historic day, and which is doing a noble work for the intellectual and social life of the town, strengthening in the minds of the people the proud consciousness of their rich inheritance, and prompting them to meet the new occasion and new duty of today as worthily as Rufus Putnam and the Rutland farmers met the duty and opportunity of 1787. In the autumn of 1898, there was another noteworthy celebration at Rutland. This time it was the Sons of the Revolution who came; and they placed upon the Putnam house a bronze tablet with the following inscription, written by Senator Hoar, who was himself present and the chief speaker, as on the earlier occasion:

"Here, from 1781 to 1787, dwelt General Rufus Putnam, Soldier of the Old French War, Engineer of the works which compelled the British Army to evacuate Boston and of the fortifications of West Point, Founder and Father of Ohio. In this house he planned and matured the scheme of the Ohio Company, and from it issued the call for the Convention which led to its organization. Over this threshold he went to lead the Company which settled Marietta, April 7, 1788. To him, under God, it is owing that the great Northwest Territory was dedicated forever to Freedom, Education, and Religion, and that the United States of America is not now a great slaveholding Empire."

Many such celebrations will there be at the home of Rufus Putnam, and at the little village on the hill. Ever more highly will New England estimate the place of old Rutland in her history; ever more sacred and significant will it become as a point of contact for the East and West; and in the far off years the sons and daughters of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin will make pilgrimages to it, as the children of New England pilgrimage to Scrooby.

1) The Ordinance of 1784, the original of the Ordinance of 1787, was drawn up by Jefferson himself, as chairman of the committee appointed by Congress to prepare a plan for the government of the territory. The draft of the committee's report, in Jefferson's own handwriting, is still preserved in the archives of the State De­partment at Washington. "It is as completely Jefferson's own work," says Bancroft, "as the Declaration of Independence." Jef­ferson worked with the greatest earnestness to secure the insertion of a clause in the Ordinance of 1784 prohibiting slavery in the North­west; and the clause was lost by only a single vote. "The voice of a single individual," said Jefferson, who foresaw more clearly than any other what the conflict with slavery was to mean to the republic, "would have prevented this abominable crime. Heaven will not always be silent. The friends of the rights of human nature will in the end prevail." They prevailed for the Northwest Territory with the achievement of Manasseh Cutler, Rufus Putnam and Nathan Dane.

Was it from Jefferson that Putnam and his men at Marietta caught their classical jargon? There was a great deal of pretentious classi­cism in America at that time, new towns everywhere being freighted with high-sounding Greek and Roman names. The founders of Marietta, so named in honor of Marie Antoinette—named one of their squares Capitolium; the road which led up from the river was the Sacra Via; and the new garrison, with blockhouses at the corners, was the Campus Martius. Jefferson had proposed dividing the Northwest into ten States, instead of five as was finally done, and for these States he proposed the names of Sylvania, Michigania, Asseni­sipia, Illinoia, Polypotamia, Cherronesus, Metropotamia, Saratoga, Pelisipia and Washington.

American Historic Towns Edited by Lyman P. Powell, G. P. Putnam' Sons, Knickerbocker Press, 1898 
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http://genealogytrails.com/mass/worcester/cem_oldcemofrutland.html

Rutland, which has aptly been called the "Cradle of Ohio," is situated in the center of the state of Massachusetts. Its scenery is picturesque and beautiful, abounding in hills and vales, brooks and natural lakes. Its principal street (or road) one and one-half miles long and ten rods in width, begins at the "Old Putnam house" and ascends the hill 1250 feet above the level of the sea to the center village, from which may be seen the towns and villages in every direction. Mountain nearly one hundred miles distant are visible. The blue hills of Milton, near the Atlantic, the Highlands on the Connecticut, Wachusett rises close at hand in the adjacent town of Princeton, while old Monadnock rears his rugged outline against the northern sky.
The territory embracing this town was purchased from the Indians December 22, 1686, settled 1713, incorporated May 30, 1722. Its situation has protected it against the encroachments of modern life, although its pure air and fine scenery has of late given it quite wide celebrity as a health resort.
Rutland is rich in historic reminiscence. Its first called minister, together with two or three members of one of its first families, fell victims of the tomahawk of the savage. During the Indian troubles, 1723-'30, Capt. Samuel Wright, one of its first proprietors and foremost citizens, led the scouts who patrolled the settlements from Brookfield to Lancaster and Sudbury. From 1744 to 1760, in the French and Indian war, her young men did valiant and effective service. It was a war of races, the Latin against the Anglo-Saxon, for supremacy on this soil. Not less than eight companies, under their own officers, marched from these hills to the frontiers on the Hudson, and Lakes George and Champlain. On their rolls are the familiar names, Phelps, How, Stone, Wheeler, Moore, Clark, Rice, Red, Davis, etc. These years of training and discipline in the arts of war prepared them for the greater contest to follow.
In the war of the Revolution the town took prompt action and furnished many volunteers, who served with honor and distinction throughout that great struggle. Two fell at Bunker Hill, and a score or more were at Dorchester and the evacuation of Boston. In 1778, a division of Burgoyne's surrendered army were quartered here, extensive barracks having been erected for their use. Rutland, however, owes its greatest distinction in having been for eight years the home of Gen. Rufus Putnam, "Founder and Father of Ohio." His dwelling was built by Col. John Murray, Rutland's wealthiest and most honored citizen, who at the beginning of the Revolution held an official position under the crown and refusing to resign fled from the town and province never to return. His estates were confiscated and sold and this house was purchased by Gen. Rufus Putnam. It was in this house, on the 9th of January, 1786, the Gen .Tupper reported to Gen. Putnam the result of his inquiries concerning the "Ohio Country." "The two veterans sat up together all night, and by daybreak had formed the plan which resulted in the organization of the 'Ohio Company' and its settlement at Marietta," and thus Rutland has earned its title, "Cradle of Ohio."
The old mansion, together with about 150 acres of land, has been purchased and its title will be vested in the Trustees of National Reservations, to be preserved as a "Memorial of Gen. Putnam." On September 17, 1898, a bronze tablet was placed at the front entrance bearing the following inscription: Here from 1781 to 1788 dwelt General Rufus Putnam, Soldier of the Old French War, Engineer of the Works which compelled the British Army to evacuate Boston and of the Fortifications of West Point, Founder and Father of Ohio. In This House He Planned and Matured The Scheme of the Ohio Company and from it Issued the Call for the Convention which led to its Organization. Over this Threshold He went to lead the Company  which settled Marietta April 7, 1788. To Him under God is owing that the Great Northwest Territory was Dedicated forever to Freedom Education and Religion and that the United States of America is not now a Great Slaveholding Empire. Place by the Massachusetts Society. Sons of the Revolution.
Shortly after the settlement of the town, what is now called the "Old Cemetery" was set apart for burial purposes. It is located on nearly the highest point of land, near the meeting house. It is enclosed by a boulder stone wall, within which rest the remains of the early settlers and the father and mothers of those Ohio Pioneers who emigrated from this town in company with General Putnam and whose descendants are found in all parts of the "Old Northwest." Many of the graves were never marked, and some stones have disappeared since Mr. Smith with such painstaking labor deciphered and transcribed their records. Many are badly broken, and all bear evidences of the ravages of time.

Source: "The Old Northwest Genealogical Quarterly," Vol. 5, July 1902
Contributed by David Everett Phillipps
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See Rufus Putnam by Brown in digital files from Americana magazine
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"People & Events of the American Revolution" by Dupuy?Hammerman, RR Bowker Company, 1974, p 392.
Putnam, Rufus. 1738-1824. Militia officer (Lt. Col), Continental officer (Brig General), engineer, surveyor, farmer, pioneer, b. Sutton, Mass.
Worked on military engineering at siege of Boston; acting chief engineer of the Army, 1776; worked on West Point defenses; made brigadier general, January 1783; drew up Newburgh Petition of officer grievances, June 1783; superintendent of the Ohio Company, 1788; first surveyor general of the United States, 1796-1803; cousin of Israel Putnam.
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Elizabeth Karen Sanders Rufus Putnam had suffered an accident as a boy which left his right eye disfigured, so the artist painted his left side.Much of the book "The Pioneers," by famed author David McCullough, is devoted to the life of Rufus Putnam.


Elizabeth Karen Sanders This image appears in the 1886 book "Journal of Gen. Rufus Putnam Kept in Northern New York During Four Campaigns of the Old French and Indian War."A new biography of Rufus Putnam has just been written (the first biography of him in over a century). It is "General Rufus Putnam: George Washington's Chief Military Engineer and the 'Father of Ohio,'" by Robert Ernest Hubbard. It is an excellent book.

This image is the one with Gen Rufus Putnam printed on shoulder in digital files
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House in Rutland in digital files
Comments

Elizabeth Karen Sanders Anyone know the source of this photo, or the exact address of the house?
5 years ago Flag Hide
Elizabeth Karen Sanders I answered my own question. The address is 344 Main St., Rutland, MA. The Rufus Putnam home is now a B&B. For more info, see:http://www.rufusputnamhouse.com/frame.htm
5 years ago Flag Hide
Elizabeth Karen Sanders There are several colonial homes of the Putnam family still standing in Massachusetts. 1. Home of Lt. Thomas Putnam (1614-1686), in Danvers, MA. This was the birthplace of Israel Putnam, the colorful Revolutionary War general. The home is owned by the Danvers Historical Society. See: http://www.danvershistory.org/buildings/putnam.html2. Home of Rev. Daniel Putnam (1696-1759) who was the grandson of Lt. Thomas Putnam's brother, Nathaniel. The house is the headquarters of the North Reading Historical and Antiquarian Society. For further info, see the society's website: http://nreadinghistory.org/Properties.html3. Home of Dea. Edward Putnam, Jr. (1682-1753), who was Lt. Thomas Putnam's grandson is in Middleton, MA.4. Home of Edward Putnam (1711-1800), who was the son of Dea. Edward Putnam, Jr. is in Sutton, MA. It is now a B&B. See: http://www.putnamhousebandb.com/5. Home of Revolutionary War General Rufus Putnam (1738-1824), who was Lt. Thomas Putnam's great-grandson, in Rutland, MA. It is now a B&B. See:http://www.rufusputnamhouse.com/frame.htm
5 years ago Flag Hide
Elizabeth Karen Sanders See also the book "The Rutland Home of Major General Rufus Putnam," by Stephen C. Earle.
3 years ago Flag Hide
Elizabeth Karen Sanders And:https://www.telegram.com/news/20171024/historian-david-mccullough-visits-historic-rutland-home#:~:text=There%20would%20be%20public%20support%20for%20public%20education,biggest%20windfalls%20in%20our%20history%2C%E2%80%9D%20Mr.%20McCullough%20said
1 year ago Flag Hide
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Surrender of Gen Burgoyne by John Trumbull
in digital files
Comments

Elizabeth Karen Sanders The man dressed in all white is Daniel Morgan. Immediately to the right of him in the painting (with his head only showing) is Gen. Rufus Putnam. This painting hangs in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
5 years ago Flag Hide
Elizabeth Karen Sanders A smaller version of it (also by John Trumbull) hangs in the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, CT. See:https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/113
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Campus Martius in digital files

Campus Martius


Marietta, OH
Campus Martius was a defensive fortification at the Marietta, Ohio settlement, and was home to Rufus Putnam, Benjamin Tupper, Arthur St. Clair, and other pioneers from the Ohio Company of Associates during the Northwest Indian War. Major Anselm Tupper was commander of the Campus Martius during the war. Construction began in 1788 and was fully completed in 1791. The Campus Martius was located on the east side of the Muskingum River, and upriver from its confluence with the Ohio River. A firsthand description of the fort is provided in Hildreth's Pioneer History, "Campus Martius is the handsomest pile of buildings on this side of the Alleghany mountains, and in a few days will be the strongest fortification in the territory of the United States. It stands on the margin of the elevated plain on which are the remains of the ancient works [mounds], mentioned in my letter of May last, thirty feet above the high bank of the Muskingum, twenty-nine perches distant from the river, and two hundred and seventy-six from the Ohio. It consists of a regular square, having a block house at each angle, eighteen feet square on the ground, and two stories high; the upper story on the outside or face, jutting over the lower one, eighteen inches. These block houses serve as bastions to a regular fortification of four sides. The curtains are composed of dwelling houses two stories high, eighteen feet wide, and of different lengths." The Campus Martius site is now occupied by the Campus Martius Museum. The Rufus Putnam House, part of the original Campus, is enclosed in the museum.
Elizabeth Karen Sanders
Elizabeth Karen Sanders
 originally shared this on 13 jul 2016
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New England Ancestors Profile
Posted 21 Feb 2012 by GlenWmWolfe
RUFUS PUTNAM OM

He was born at Sutton, Massachusetts 9 April 1738 [i] ; died at Marietta, Ohio 4 May 1824, aged 86 yrs. [ii] Rufus was a son of Elisha and Susanna (Fuller) Putnam.  He married (1) at Brookfield, Massachusetts 6 April 1761 to Elizabeth Ayres. [iii]   She died at Brookfield  16 November 1761. [iv]   He married (2) at Westborough, Massachusetts, 10 January 1765 to Persis Rice. [v]   She was born in Westborough 19 November 1737, the daughter of Zebulon and Abigail (Forbush) Rice.
A farm youth, he learned the trade of millwright, to which he was apprenticed in 1754 in Brookfield, Massachusetts; was noted for his strength and activity, being six feet tall. He started his military career in the French and Indian Wars; first a private, he was a sergeant by 1759 and an Ensign in 1760; resumed his old occupations of millwright and farmer in Brookfield in 1761. During the next decade he used what little leisure he had to teach himself geometry; became a surveyor and was working full time at that profession when the Revolution broke out.
The following sketch for his service in the Revolutionary War appears in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (12:875-876).
Rufus Putnam, Brookfield. Lieutenant Colonel; list of officers of Col. David Brewer's regt.; recommended in Committee of Safety at Cambridge, June 17, 1775, that said officers be commissioned by Congress; also, Lieutenant Colonel, Col. David Brewer's (9th) regt.; engaged April 24, 1775; service to Aug. 1, 1775, 3 mos. 15 days; also, muster roll of field and staff officers, dated Roxbury Camp, Oct. 7, 1775; also, Colonel; Continental Army pay accounts for service from Jan. 1, 1777, to Dec. 31, 1779; also, return of staff officers recommended by said Putnam for commissions, dated Boston, April 10, 1777; also, receipts dated July 20, 1778, signed by said Putnam, for men raised for the term of 9 months from the time of their arrival at Fishkill, agreeable to resolve of April 20, 1778, and delivered to him by Jonathan Warner, Commissioner; also, return of officers for clothing, dated Boston, Nov. 24, 1778; also, Colonel, 5th Mass. regt.; list of settlements of rank of Continental officers, dated West Point, made by a Board held for the purpose and confirmed by Congress Sept. 6, 1779; commissioned Aug. 5, 1776; also, Colonel, 5th Mass. regt.; Continental Army pay accounts for service from Jan. 1, 1780, to Dec. 31, 1780; also, muster rolls of field, staff, and commissioned officers for Jan.-April, 1781, dated Garrison at West Point; appointed Aug. 5, 1776; reported in Boston on public business; also, returns of effectives, dated May 4, May 11, May 18, and May 25, 1781, dated Garrison West Point; reported on command at Boston; also, Colonel, 5th regt., 3d Mass. brigade commanded by Maj. John Graham; return of effectives, dated May 25, 1781; also, returns of effectives, dated June 1, June 8, and June 15, 1781; reported settling public accounts at Boston by order of Gen. Heath from Jan. 19, 1781; also, recommendation dated New Windsor, Jan. 20, 1783, signed by said Putnam, Brigadier General, senior officer of the Mass. Line then in camp, stating that Capt. Seth Drew was entitled to a majority by reason of the promotion of Col. Greaton to Brigadier General Jan. 7, 1783, and asking that he be appointed accordingly.
General Putnam is one of the officers depicted in John Trumbull’s well-known painting, Burgoyne’s Surrender at Saratoga. The experiences of General Putnam throughout the Revolution are set forth in great detail in the 1931 edition of these Memorials. After the war he rejoined his family, then living in Rutland, Massachusetts, on a large farm be he bought in 1780, which had belonged to an expelled Tory.
Late in 1783 he joined with other officers of the northern states in petitioning Congress for a grant of land in the ‘western country-’, viz., Ohio. They received it in two years. In this connection it was due to a suggestion of his that our excellent system of laying out and surveying the public lands in townships of six miles square originated. He surveyed the lands bordering Passamaquoddy Bay (Maine) in the summer of 1784 in company with Lieutenant Park Hollan also an Original Member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.  The summer and fall of the next year he surveyed the coast, islands, and towns from Machias Bay to Penobscot Bay (also with Lieutenant Holland) and his title was Superintendent of Surveys of Eastern Lands. On 10 January 1786 , he and Brigadier-General Benjamin Tupper also an Original Member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati issued a public notice of the formation of the Ohio Company. On 23 November 1787, he was appointed Superintendent of the Ohio Company relating to the settlement of their lands northwest of the Ohio River. A party of forty emigrants, mostly from Massachusetts, led by Generals Putnam and Tupper, set out at once; arrived in Marietta 7 April 1788, to begin the first permanent white settlement in what is now the State of Ohio. In 1789 General Putnam was appointed a Judge of the United States Court for the ‘Northwest Territory’; brought his family out to Marietta in 1790; was Surveyor-General of Federal Lands in the Territory, 1796 to 1803: was a member of the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1803; was appointed a Trustee of fledgling Ohio University in Athens in 1811.   He was granted a Bounty Land Warrant 29 June 1790. [vi]
Rufus was an Original Member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati from 1783 until 1824, and was a member of the Standing Committee of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati in 1787. His surviving children and some grandchildren are named in his will. [vii]
Children, born in Brookfield:
i.              Ayres, b. 13 October 1761, d. 29 September 1762.
ii.             Elizabeth, b. 19 November 1765, d. in Marietta 8 November 1829.
iii.            Persis, b. 6 January 1767.  She marr. at Marietta 22 May 1798 to Perley Howe.
iv.            Susanna, b. 5 August 1768.  He marr. 13 December 1787 to Ensign Christopher Burlingame.
v.             Abigail, b. 7 August 1770.  She marr. at  Washington Co., Ohio 10 April1791, William Browning.
vi.            William Rufus, b. 12 December 1771.  He marr. at Marietta 1 February 1802 to Jerusha Gitteau.
vii.                Franklin, b. 26 May 1774; d. 3 April 1776. Edwin, b. 19 January 1776.  He marr. 12 June 1800 to Eliza Davis.
ix.            Martha “Patty”, b. 25 November 1777.  She marr. at Marietta 25 March 1802, to Benjamin Tupper, Jr.
x.             Katherine, bapt. 8 May 1780.  She marr. in 1805 to Ebenezer Buckingham.

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Rufus bio
Posted 21 Feb 2012 by GlenWmWolfe


  
 Article taken from "Backsights" Magazine published by Surveyors Historical Society

SURVEYOR GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM

by Norman C. Caldwell
This article relates to the pioneering surveyors of the Public Lands of the Territory and State of Michigan.
As research into background and historical events takes place, certain items come to light, such as the Commissioners of the General Land Office and various Surveyors General of the Territories. It is not intended to include these individuals in the forthcoming publication documenting the biographical information of the U.S. Deputy Surveyors in Michigan currently being developed. It is therefore being presented in this medium to lay the groundwork and build a foundation for future endeavors.
GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM is one of the individuals to whom this country owes considerable homage and respect. His military and private service to the new country, the United States of America, with the knowledge and ability to overcome what we today would view as severe impediments, is awesome.
He was the first U. S. Surveyor General, serving from 1 October 1796 to 1803. He was born 9 April 1738 at Sutton, Massachusetts and married April 1761 to Elizabeth (D: 1762) a daughter of William Ayers, Esquire, of Brookfield, (Connecticut?). A second marriage was 10 January 1765 to Persis (B: 19 November 1737, D: 6 September 1820 at Marietta, Ohio) a daughter of Zebulon Rice of Westborough.
He died 4 May 1824 at Marietta, Ohio, with burial in the "Mounds Cemetery" so named for its proximity to one of the large ceremonial mounds he worked to preserve in the region.
His children were Ayres (B: 1762, D: 1762), Elizabeth (B: 19 November 1765, D: 8 November 1830), Persis (B: 6 June 1767, D: September 1822), Susanna (B: 5 August 1768), Abigail (B: 7 August 1770), William Rufus (B: 12 December 1771), Franklin (B: 27 May 1774, D: April 1776), Edwin (B: 19 January 1776), Patty (B: 25 November 1777) and Catherine (B: 17 October, D: March 1808).
Upon the death of his father, Rufus, at age seven, lived with his grandfather for two years until his mother remarried. His stepfather was John Sadler and they resided in Sutton where the family ran an inn.
At the age of 14 he chose his brother-in-law Jonathon Dudley as his guardian, then at 16 he apprenticed himself to Daniel Matthews of Brookfield as a millwright.
He enlisted in the military under Captain Ebenezer Learned, and arrived at Fort Edward 15 June 1757. There he volunteered to a company of Rangers, serving under Lieutenant Collins, and scouting the lower end of Lake Champlain. Upon return to the Fort he again volunteered for scout duty and served under Captain Israel Putnam (his cousin?).
On the 15 April 1758 he enlisted under Captain Whitcomb, traveling from Northampton to Greenbush where they built breastworks for the fort. After nearly four years of military service he returned to his farm and resumed the building of mills. It is reported that at this time he also began the study of the art of Surveying.
On the 10th of January 1773 he was a member of a party sent to Pensacola, Florida to explore that area for settlement. They were offered "warrants" in return for their prior military services. Nineteen townships were selected and laid out, a number of "New Englanders" emigrated to the area, and then Governor Chester received instructions to not sell the tracts. The colony was abandoned and the members left to shift for themselves.
On 19 April 1775 he enlisted in the Continental Army as a Lieutenant-Colonel, commanded by David Brewer, and their first engagement was at Roxbury. With his knowledge and skill as a millwright he was engaged mainly in the construction of fortifications at Roxbury, Sewall’s Point, Providence, Newport, Dorchester Heights, Long Island, West Point, and New York.
General Washington appointed him as his Engineer and the rank of Colonel on 11 August 1776.
On the 17th of December 1782 he resigned from the military and returned home to his family.
He was not permitted to remain in private life, as he was soon selected to survey the eastern lands of the State of Massachusetts and to negotiate a treaty with the Penobscot Indians in 1786.
General Rufus Putnam was one of the first Directors (with Reverend Manasseh Cutler, Major Winthrop Sargent, Captain Thomas Cushing, and Colonel John Brooks) that organized the Ohio Company. They directed the purchase and surveys of the Ohio Company lands. Four Surveyors and the supporting staff, consisting of Colonel Sproat, Colonel Meigs, Major Tupper and John Mathers (under the direction of Putnam & Cutler) landed at what was to become Marrietta, Ohio, on 7 April 1788 and commenced their activities to identify the new home sites.
Putnam became the Brigadier General in the regular army on 5 May 1792 and served in the Northwest Territory, his first assignment being to obtain a signed treaty with the Wabash Indians.
In 1798 he was a co-founder of the Muskingum Academy and in 1811 was appointed by the State Legislature as a Trustee of the Ohio University.
During his later years he resided with his daughter, Elizabeth, at Marietta, Ohio.
During his tenure as the Surveyor General of the State of Ohio and the Northwest Territories, he developed and instituted the "contract method" of surveys. This system would be followed for the next 110 years in the delineation of a rectangular survey system over the public lands of the United States. It would serve until the formation of the General Land Office in 1910, when federal employees resumed the task.
In 1805, his son, William Rufus Putnam of Marietta, Ohio, surveyed Ranges 8 & nine, Towns 5, 6, 7 & eight in Ohio.
No surveys were performed in Michigan during Rufus Putnam’s tenure, however, many of the techniques and procedures he developed and improved were passed along to his successors. We owe General Rufus Putnam considerable respect for his efforts in guiding the early surveys toward the system it is today.
References:
White (I.P.)7, 16-18, 40, 90, 96.
History of the Putnam Family, pp.161-169.
Hildreth’s: Lives of the Early Settlers of Ohio.
Walker’s History of Athens County, Ohio.
Mary Cone: Life of Rufus Putnam.
History of Sutton, Massachusetts.
E.C. Dawes: Journal of Rufus Putnam.
Ohio Archaeology & History Quarterly, June 1888.
New England Genealogical Register, Vol. 42.
Essex Institute Historical Collection.
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Eben p 161-169
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General Rufus PUTNAM - Revolutionary War Record
Posted 27 Mar 2012 by GlenWmWolfe
After the shots at The battle of Lexington were fired, Putnam immediately enlisted the same day, on April 19, 1775, in one of Massachusett's first revolutionary regiments. Putnam later enlisted in the Continental Army as a Lieutenant Colonel, under the command of David Brewer. Brewer's regiment first engaged with the British Army in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Putnam, drawing from his knowledge and skill as a millwright, was essential in constructing the fortifications necessary for obtaining victory. His fortifications played as a key advantage for the Continental Army, securing victories at Sewall's Point, Providence, New Port, Dorchester Heights, Long Island, and West Point.General Washington appointed Putnam to be the Chief of Engineers of the Works of New York. He was soon promoted to engineer with the rank of colonel; however when the Continental Congress rejected his proposition to establish a corp of engineers in December 1776, Putnam resigned.He reenlisted in the Northern Army and served under Major General Horatio Gates. Under Gates, Putnam commanded two regiments in the battle of Saratoga. Putnam also constructed crucial fortifications, including Fort Putnam at West Point in 1778. In 1779 Putnam served under Major General Anthony Wayne after the capture of Stony Point. Putnam's remaining military career was rather uneventful. In January 1783 he was commissioned as brigadier general.
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General RUFUS PUTNAM (1738-1824)
Posted 27 Mar 2012 by GlenWmWolfe

General Rufus Putnam was born in Sutton, Massachusetts Colony, 9 April 1738, son of Deacon Elisha and Susannah Fuller Putnam.  He died in Marietta, Ohio Territory, 4 May 1824.
Married (1) Elizabeth Ayres, April 1761; daughter of William Ayres, Esq., of Brookfield, MA.  One child:  Ayres Putnam, born and died 1762
Married (2) Persis Rice, daughter of Zebulon Rice of Westborough, Massachusetts.  Children:
1. Persis b. 1767 d. 1822
2. Susannah b.     d. 1822
3. Abigail b. 7 Aug 1770
4. William Rufus b. 12 Dec 1771
5. Edwin b. 19 Jan 1776
6. Patty b. 25 Nov. 1777
Rufus Putnam was left fatherless at an early age, when he was just seven years old.  At no time in his youth would one predict that he would become one of the two great soldiers the Putnam family produced.
By some historians, he is considered to far excel his cousin, Gen. Israel Putnam, in military qualities, as he excelled in education.
His education, however, was obtained only by his most persistent effort.  With the exception of two years spent in Danvers at the home of his grandfather Jonathan Fuller, immediately following his father's death, Rufus had no organized schooling.
In his later years, he was sent to open the Ohio Territory, and he founded the present city of Marietta, Ohio.  The Putnam House still stands as a memorial in Marietta.
He died there, May 1824.
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1752 - Rufus chose his bro-in-law Jonathan Dudley of Sutton as guardian.
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1798 Rufus founded with others the Muskingam Academy
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1811 - Rufus was appointed as one of the trustees of Ohio University
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Rand
General Rufus Putnam was born on 9 Apr 1738 in Sutton, Worcester, MA (2262). He appeared on the census in 1790 in Rutland, Worcester, MA (2263). The census info is 3-1-7. He died on 4 May 1824 in Marietta, Washington, OH (2264, 2265). The MA Centinel has the death in September 1823. General Rufus Putnam was left fatherlessat the age of seven. At no time during his youth would one have predicted that of two great soldiers which the Putnam family has given to this country, he was to be one; yet such has proven to be the fact, and bby some he is considered to far excel his cousin and fellow patriot in military qualities, even as he excelled in education. Yet he obtained this education only by the most persistent perseverance, for, with the exception of two years spent in Danvers immediately following his father's death, during which time he was an inmate in the family of his grandfather, Jonathan Fuller, he had no schooling. Upon his mother's marriage to John Sadler he returned to Sutton where Sadler kept an inn. Sadler was not inclined to encourage the fondness of his stepson for "book learning," so young Putnam was iibliged to do his studying at odd moments, and at night by Candle light; moreover, such text books as he had were obtained by his own efforts, he, occasionally earning a few pennies, by attention to the guests at the inn. With what he earned in this wise, he bought ammunition and by means of an old gun shot small game, which abounded in the neighborhood, from the sales of which he obtained the money necessary for elementary text-books.
At the age of fourteen he chose his brother-in-law, Jonathan Dudley, of Sutton, guardian, and two years later we find him apprenticed to Daniel Matthews of Brookfield to learn the trade of millwright. This trade required some knowledge of geometry, and although Matthews did not send the boy to school, yet he did not discourage him in his studies as his stepfather had done. "During this time his physical frame grew fully as rapidly as his mind, so that when he was eighteen years old he possessed the brawny limbs, the muscular power, and the full stature of a man six feet high."
Early in his nineteenth year he enlisted as a private in the company of Captain Ebenezer Learned. The detachment left Brookfield on the 30th of April, 1757, reaching Fort Edward on the 15th of June. Determined to see service, he joined a company of rangers as a volunteer, and, on the 8th of July; marched under Lt. Collins, on a scout around the lower end of Lake Champlain. Being detailed with two comrades to reconnoitre South Bay, Putnam, being some time absent, the detachment supposing them captured returned to camp, leaving the three scouts to their fate. After forty-eight hours, without food, they reached camp. Shortly afterward he did scout duty under the command of Israel Putnam, then a captain in provincial service.
The expiration of his term of enlistment drawing near, and it becoming evident that the provincial troops were to be kept beyond the agreed time of their discharge, the company to the number of seventy, under the leadership of their captain, having made snowshoes, silently left the camp and started through the forest for home. They carried with them provisions for fourteen days, but the hardships of the road, the difficulty of proceeding in a proper course, and so many froze their feet and hands, that from the lack of transportation facilities much of their provisions was abandoned. Their suffering, indeed, was terrible; edath from starvation or freezing stared them in the face, but on the 15th of February, he arrived at his home and in the following April reenlisted under Captain Whitcomb for another campaign in the provincial service. In this journal he records that from Northampton to Greenbush, at which place he arrived June 8th, there was, with thew exception of a small fort on the Housatonic River, but one house. On account of his mechanical ability he was engaged with the "regiment of carpenters" in such work as they could do. Rufus Putnam kept a journal during this and his subsequent terms of service, from which we learn of the feeling existing in the camp at the cowardly manner in which General Webb left the garrison at Fort William Henry to their fate. At the end of the campaign of 1759 he was offered a lieutenant's commission in the army but declined. Upon the close of the campaign and war, having seen nearly four years service, he resumed the business of building mills and cultivating his farm, at every opportunity however, adding to his knowledge of surveying.
It was in 1761 that he married Miss Elizabeth Ayers, but inside of a year was left alone with an infant son who, however, soon followed his mother. In his journal he touchingly alludes to his forlorn condition after this double bereavement, but in 1765 again married, this time Miss Persis Rice, and settled in North Brookfield.
Always an active man, and much interested in the schemes of the times, it was but natural that the project of the colonial officers to secure a grant of land from the Crown and to settle thereon should have had his support. They styled themselves the Military Adventurersm and engaged General Lyman to prosecute their claims; Lyman obtained a promise of lands in West Florida. The company appointed a committee, of which Colonel Israel Putnam and Rufus Putnam were members, to prospect the proposed location. Having chartered a sloop they sailed from New York, 10 January, 1773, and arrived at Pensacola, 1 March, and although Govenor Chester had received no instructions from the home government they pushed on and explored the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Yazoo, thence some thirty miles up that river. Upon their return to Pensacola, although the Governor as yet had received no instructions he took it upon himself to promise them, upon very satisfactory terms the location they had chosen and where they had laid out nineteen townships. Encouraged by the committee's report, quite a number of New Englanders seized the opportunity to emigrate to new lands; but unfortunately, Governor Chester had in the meantime received positive orders to not grant or sell any more lands for the present. Thus the colonists, thrown upon their own resources in an unhealthy country, and being allowed to take only what unoccupied land they could find, soon became discouraged, and as many died the colony was abandoned. Rufus Putnam found awaiting him on his return more stirring matters than new schemes for colonization, for the relations between the colonies and the home government were daily becoming more strained.
As soon as the news of bloodshed on April 19th, 1775, resched Worcester County, Rufus Putnam was up and ready to do his part with his neighbors and friends. As lieutenant-colonel of a regiment commanded by David Brewer, he marched to Roxbury, and after the battle of June 17th, he was called upon to direct the raising of fortifications. He immediately constructed a line of fortifications on Roxbury Neck and Sewall's Point, which attracted Washington's favorable notice on his arrival. In December, he accompanied General Lee to Providence and Newport and laid out works there, particularly a battery to defend the harbor.
Upon returning to Boston, he found the American army still shutting the British up in Boston, and Washington trying to devise some method to force the issue favorably. During a call on General Heath, Putnam's eye fell on a work of "Muller's Field Engineer," which after some entreaty he obtained. From this work he procured the idea for effecting a lodgement on Dorchester Heights, and which he accomplished on the night of the 4th of March, thus forcing the evacuation of Boston. These signal successes of Putnam proved to Washington what a valuable engineer he had with him and when subsequent occasion offered he showed his appreciation of Putnam's ability in this capacity.
During 1776, he was charged with the supervision of the works in and about New York. On the 11th August, 1776, he was informed by Washington of his appointment by Congress as engineer with the rank of Colonel. He rendered signal service on the retreat from, and after the battle of Long Island. On December 17, 1776, he accepted the command of a regiment in the Massachusetts line. Upon being notified of this, Washington wrote to Congress as follows: I have also to mention that for want of some establishment in the department of engineers agreeable to the plan laid before Congress in October last, Colonel Putnam, who was as the head of it, has quitted and takes a regiment in the state Of Massachusetts. I know of no other man even tolerably well qualified for the conducting of that business. None of the French gentlemen whom I have seen with appointments in that way appear to know anything of that matter. There is one in Philadelphia who, I am told, is clever; but him I have not seem."
Putnam's regiment was engaged in the campaign which culminated at Saratoga with the surrender of Burgoyne, and behaved themselves very creditably throughout. They went into quarters at Albany. In the following March he was called upon to fortify West Point, and was obliged to tear down much of what the French engineer in charge had accomplished. The Fort at West Point, built by his own regiment, is named for him. General Israel Putnam was in command there at the time. During the early part of 1780, he was in Boston on leave of absence, and availed himself of this opportunity to obtain relief for the Massachusetts troops, then suffering greatly from lack of money and supp;ies. It was through his prompt action and forethought that a mutiny amongst the Massachusetts troops was prevented. During the autumn of 1782, he decided to withdraw from the army, and on the 17th of December he wrote to Washington, expressing his final determination to retire from active service and return to the care of his private affairs. In 1780, Putnam bought on easy terms the confiscated property of Colonel Murray, a tory. This property was situated in Rutland and consisted of a large farm and spacious mansion. Although the war was over and Colonel Putnam had intended tro devote himself to his own affairs, yet he was not permitted to retire completely to private, for soon he was called upon to survey the eastern lands of the state of Massachusetts, and at once proceeded to the Passamaquoddy. Congress voted him a Brigadier General's commission 7 Jan 1783. In the year 1786, he was appointed commissioner to treat with the Penobscot Indians, together with General Lincoln and Judge Rice of Wiscasset. In January of the following year, he joined General Lincoln as a volunteer aid against the insurgents under Shays, and remained with him until their dispersion at Petersham. This year he was also appointed a justice of the peace and was elected to the legislature representing Rutland. During the year 1783-4, Putnam had urged upon Washington plans for the settlement of the western country, and as agent for the retired officers of the continental army had endeavored to bring this about; but, circumstances not being wholly ripe for the successful culmination of these plans, it was reserved for Dr. Manasseh Cutler, the prominent patriot and botanist of Essex County, Massachusetts, to obtain, three years later, the concessions asked for. Dr. Cutler not only obtained the grant of 1,500,000 acres of land to the Ohio Company upon easy terms, but was instrumental in procuring the passage of the ordinance of 1787, which prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River. The one it is said was dependant on the other. Cutlar and Putnam, working together, were the chief spirits in the enterprise. Therefore when on the 23rd of November, 1787, the directors of the Ohio Company appointed Putnam, superintendent of all the business relating to the commencement of their lands in the territory northwest of the Ohio River, he gladly undertook the difficult position. "The people to go forward in companies employed under my direction, were to consist of four surveyors, one blacksmith, and nine common hands, with two wagons, etc., etc. Major Hatfield White conducted the first party, which started from Danvers the first of December. The other party was appointed to rendezvous at Hartford, where I met them the first day of January, 1788." The two parties joined 14th of February, 1788, at the Youghiogheny River, thence they proceeded by boat to the mouth of the Muskingum where they arrived on April 7, 1788, and commenced the settlement of Marietta. The first of the party to jump ashore is said to have been Allen Putnam of Danvers.
The four surveyors who accompanied Putnam were Colonel Sproat, Colonel Meiggs, Major Tupper, and Mr. John Mathers. The family of Rufus Putnam arrived at the settlement in 1790. The early years of the settlement were years of watch and ward against the Indians, and many suffered at their hands. If it had not been for the careful management of the affairs of the company by Putnam and his associates, disaster must surely have come. Financial trouble threatened the company in their early years, but Congress was disposed to treat the adventurers with generosity, apprediating the great difficulties of their position. General Putnam, himself, lost quite heavily in advances to the settlers. The expence of the Indian wars to the Ohio Company was $11,350, a very heavy burden for them to bear. On May 5, 1792, Putnam received the news of his appointment as brigadier general in the army of the United States and immediately proceeded to carry out the orders of the Secretary of war, which were to procure the signing of a treaty with the Wabash Indians and in which he was successful. It is impossible in the limited space at hand to give but an inadequate idea of the services of General Putnam to the northwest. He was active in all schemes for the advancement of the settlements in educational, social and more material projects.

See his picture on p 50 of Vol1 of the Putnam Leaflets.

He was married to Elizabeth Ayers (dau of William Ayers Esquire and Hannah Hamilton) on 6 Apr 1761 in Brookfield, Worcester, MA (2266, 2267). Elizabeth was born 27 Apr 1736 in Brookfield (2268, 2269). She died 16 Nov 1761 in Brookfield (2270, 2271, 2272).
Their children:
Ayres

He married second Persis Rice on 10 Jan 1765 in Westborough, Worcester, MA (2279, 2280). She was born 19 Nov 1737 in Westborough (2281). She died on 6 Sep 1820 in Marietta, Washington, OH (2282).
Their children
Elizabeth, Persis, Susanna, Abigail, William Rufus, Franklin, Hon, Edwin, Martha and Catharine.

Sources
2262 - Eben p 81
2263 - Census record p 234
2264 - Eben p 81, 161
2265 - American Antiquarian Society, Index to obituaries in MA Centinel and Columbian Centinel, 1784 to 1840, Vol 4. Boston, MA, G.K. Hall Co., 1961. p 3701.
2266 - Eben Leaflets Vol 1 p 38
2267 - Vital records of Brookfield, MA p 389.
2268 - Eben p 161
2269 - Eben Leaflets Vol 1 p 38
2270 - Eben p 161
2271 - Eben Leaflets Vol 2 p 38
2272 - Vital records of Brookfield, MA p 522
2273 - Eben p 161
2274 - Eben Leaflets Vol 1 p 38
2275 - Vitsal records of Brookfield p 178
2276 - Eben p 161
2277 - Eben Leafleys Vol 1 p 38
2278 - Vital records of Brookfield p 522
2279 - Ibid p 389
2280 - Vitaal Records of Westborough, MA p 198
2281 - Eben p 161
2282 - Same
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Birth	9 Apr 1738	Sutton, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States
Occupation	1756	MIllwright apprentice to Daniel Matthews - Brookfield, Worcester, Massachusetts Bay, British America
Marriage	6 Apr 1761	Brookfield, Worcester, Massachusetts Bay, British America - Elizabeth Ayers
Marriage	10 Jan 1765	Westboro, Massachusetts Bay, British America - Persis Rice
Occupation	1787	member of the General Court of Massachusettts - Rutland, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States
Residence (family)	7 Apr 1788	led the establishment of Marietta, Ohio and the opening of the Northwest Territories. - Marietta, Northwest Territory, United States - Persis Rice
Occupation	30 Mar 1798	First Surveyor General of United States - Marietta, Northwest Territory, United States
Death	4 May 1824	Marietta, Washington, OH
Census (family)	1790 US Census	Rutland, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States - Persis Rice
Census (family)	1810 US Census	Washington Co, Ohio, United States - Persis Rice
Burial		Mound Cemetery, Marietta, Washington, Ohio, United States
Military		Served in French & Indian War
Military		Revolutionary War Patriot

Spouse	Elizabeth Ayers (1736 - 1762)
Child	Ayres Putnam (1762 - 1762)

Spouse	Persis Rice (1737 - 1820)
Child	Elizabeth Putnam (1765 - 1830)
Child	Persis Putnam (1767 - 1822)
Child	Susanna Putnam (1768 - 1840)
Child	Abigail Putnam (1770 - 1805)
Child	William Rufus Putnam (1771 - 1855)
Child	Franklin Putnam (1774 - 1776)
Child	Hon Edwin Putnam (1776 - 1844)
Child	Patty or Martha Putnam (1777 - 1842)
Child	Catharine Putnam (1780 - 1808)

Father	Deacon Elisha Putnam (1685 - 1745)
Mother	Susanna Fuller (1695 - 1772)
Sibling	Elisha Putnam II (1715 - 1758)
Sibling	Hannah Putnam (1717 - 1801)
Sibling	Lieutenant Nehemiah Putnam (1719 - 1791)
Sibling	Jonathan Putnam (1721 - 1798)
Sibling	Susanna Putnam (1723 - 1784)
Sibling	Mary Putnam (1725 - 1736)
Sibling	Stephen Putnam (1728 - 1803)
Sibling	Amos Putnam (1730 - 1811)
Sibling	Eunice Putnam (1732 - 1787)
Sibling	Huldah Putnam (1734 - 1797)

Notes