USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > Reminiscences of Worcester from the earliest period, historical and genealogical with notices of early settlers and prominent citizens, and descriptions of old landmarks and ancient dwellings, accompanied by a map and numerous illustrations > Part 8
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The object of the remarkable assemblage above referred to, having been accomplished, the majority of those congregated returned peacefully and quietly to their homes, but a party of about five hundred with the Worcester Committee of Corres- pondence, consisting that year of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Wil- liam Young, John Smith, Joshua Bigelow, David Bancroft, Jonathan Stone, and Stephen Salisbury, repaired to Rutland to ask the resignation of Col. Murray, another of the Mandamus Council. Before their arrival there, they were joined by nearly a thousand men from the Western towns. Alarmed by the re- ports which had reached him, Col. Murray had fled ; the state- ments of his family that he had gone, being distrusted, his house and other buildings were diligently searched by the vast crowd, but he could not be found, although the highest hay loft of his barn was penetrated by the investigators. He became & refugee, and his vast estates were confiscated, as were also those of his son, Daniel Murray.
The ten children of Hon. Timothy and Sarah (Chandler) Paine were :
1st, Dr. William Paine, born June 5, 1750, married Sept. 23, 1773, Lois Orne, daughter of Timothy Orne of Salem ; 2d, Timothy, Jr., born Jan. 5, 1752, died Dec. 29. 1775, at Men- don ; 3d, Samuel, born Aug. 23, 1754, left the country with his brother William on account of his loyalist proclivities, but re- turned after the war, and died in Worcester June 21, 1807 ; 4th, Hannah, born July 22, 1755, married Ebenezer Bradish of
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Cambridge, Oct. 21, 1772, and died at Worcester April 2, 1841 ; 5th, Nathaniel, born in 1757, died in infancy ; 6th, Nathaniel, (afterwards Judge of Probate,) born Jan. 5, 1759, died Oct. 7, 1840 ; 7th, Anthony, born in 1760, died in 1788; 8th, John, born July 26, 1762, died Dec. 23, 1732 ; 9th, Sarah, born March 28, 1764, married Jan. 11, 1786, James Perkins, Jr., of Salem, died Dec. 24, 1841 ; 10th, Elizabeth, born Jan. 12, 1766, married in 1786 Dr. Joseph Trumbull of Petersham, who died March 2, 1824, aged 67 ; she died July 10, 1832. These were parents of the late George Augustus Trumbull of Worcester. The latter, who died Aug. 17, 1868, aged 75, married Sept. 20, 1815, Louisa Clapp, daughter of Capt. Caleb Clapp of Green- field, a veteran of eight years' service in the Revolutionary War. Mrs. Trumbull still survives, hale and vigorous in her 79th year. She and her husband celebrated their golden wed- ding, Sept. 20, 1865, at their mansion on Trumbull Square, which formerly stood on Court Hill, being used for the County Court House from 1751 to 1803. Mr. Trumbull was formerly bookseller, publisher of the Massachusetts Spy from 1819 to 1823, and afterwards from 1829 to 1858, cashier successively of the Central and Citizens' Banks of Worcester. The ten children of George A. and Louisa C. Trumbull are :
1st, Elizabeth, born Aug. 31, 1816, married Oct. 22, 1835, Gen. William S. Lincoln, son of the late Gov. Lincoln ; 2d, George C. Trumbull, born March 1, 1818, married Nancy Moore ; 3d, Caroline Burling, born June 24, 1820, married June 24, 1842, Francis Blake, son of the late Hon. Francis Blake ; 4th, Louisa Jane, born Oct. 12, 1822, married in 1845, Henry Lea, then of Alton, Ill .; 5th, Sarah Paine Trumbull, born Aug. 26, 1824, died in 1870, married in 1847, her cousin John Clapp Ripley of Greenfield, for nearly thirty years assis- tant cashier and cashier of the Citizens' Bank, until his death Oct. 8, 1869, aged 50; 6th, Joseph Trumbull, born July 23, 1823, banker in New York, who married first Francis T., daughter of Charles A. Hamilton, and married second Mary M. Johnson of New Orleans ; 7th, Charles Perkins Trumbull, born Sept. 12, 1830, Quartermaster of the 34th Reg't, M. V., during the war of the Rebellion under his brother-in-law, Gen.
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W. S. Lincoln ; 8th, Susan, born March 30, 1832; 9th, Isabella Frink, born March 20, 1834, married George F. Hartshorn, for many years cashier of the Central Bank ; 9th, Mary Abbot Trumbull, born Feb. 2, 1837, died May 1864, married in 1858, Hon. J. B. D. Coggswell, in 1866 U. S. District Attorney of Wisconsin, at Milwaukee, afterwards a member successively of the House and Senate of Massachusetts, and now (1877) president of the Senate; 10th, John Trumbull, born March 23, 1841.
Dr. William Paine, graduated at Harvard in 1768, the second in a class of forty, when the names were arranged ac- cording to the dignity of families. He received his medical education under the direction of Dr. Edward A. Holyoke at Sa- lem, and began practice in Worcester in the latter part of the year 1771, where he opened the first apothecary store in the county, on Court Hill, afterwards continued by Dr. Abraham Lincoln and others. Dr. Paine, however, was not himself an apothecary, but he subsequently, after the troubles caused by the war were over, became distinguished as a man of letters and science, as well a practising physician. With others of the children of the first families in the village, at that time, includ- ing his cousins, the sons of the first Judge Chandler, Dr. Paine was in his early youth a pupil of President Adams, when the latter taught school in Worcester. Mr. Adams, in his diary thus refers to a visit he made here in 1771, and to some of his former pupils :
" Sunday, June 22, 1771. Heard Mr. Wheeler [Rev. Joseph Wheeler, father of Theophilus Wheeler,] late minister of Har- vard, at Worcester all day. Here I saw many faces much altered since I first knew this place, which is now sixteen years. Here I saw many young gentlemen who were my scholars and pupils when I kept school here; John Chandler, Esq., of Pe- tersham ; Rufus Chandler, the lawyer; Dr. William Paine, who now studies medicine with Dr. Holyoke of Salem ; Nathan- iel Chandler, who studies law with Mr. Putnam; and Thad- deus Maccarty, [son of the minister,] who is now in the practice of physic at Dudley ; most of these began to learn Latin with me. Drank tea with Mr. Paine, Mrs. Paine, Dr.
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Holyoke's lady, and Dr. Billy Paine. The Doctor is a very civil, agreeable and sensible young gentleman."
Dr. Paine inherited the loyal feelings of his family, and early identified himself with the royal cause, at the beginning of the movement toward the Revolution. The bold and celebrated protest of June 20, 1774, by fifty-two loyalists out of the two hundred and fifty legal voters in Worcester against the " treasonable doings " of the patriots or Whigs, was the joint production of Dr. Paine and his uncle, Attorney General Put- nam. The recording of this protest, which denounced those engaged in the great movement of the time for liberty, against British oppression, as " violators of all law and civil liberty, malevolent disturbers of the peace, and enemies of mankind," by the tory Town Clerk, after the paper had been indignant- ly repudiated and refused acceptance, in the town meeting where it had been acted upon, naturally created a storm of indig- nant denunciation upon the head of the Town Clerk, Clark Chandler, who was double first-cousin of Dr. Paine, and others connected with the transaction. The first knowledge the pat- riots, or Whigs, had of the transaction, that sentiments so an- tagonistic to the views of the great majority of the voters of the town were on record. on the same pages with their own patriotic declarations, was derived from the Boston newspapers, whither the recorded protest had been sent for publication. Discouraged and mortified beyond description, the people as- sembled in town meeting, and after denouncing in unmeasured terms the protest and its authors, voted, "That the Town Clerk do, in presence of the Town, erase or otherwise deface, the said recorded protest, and the names thereto subscribed, so that it may become utterly illegible and unintelligible." Also, " That the signers of said protest be deemed unworthy of hold- ing any town office or honor until they have made satisfaction for their offence, as public as the protest was," etc. An exam- ination of the records shows how effectively this vote was car- carried out. After the pen had done its thorough work in making the words unintelligible and unreadible, the pages were further defaced by Clerk Chandler dipping his fingers in the ink and drawing them over every line, all done in open town meeting.
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The Massachusetts Spy of Sept. 15, 1774, (then printed in Boston,) had this statement : "We have received from Worces- ter the recantation of John Chandler, Esq., and forty-two others of protesters against the proceedings of that town, which gave such just cause of offence to the public ; as also an ac- knowledgment of six justices of that county for having aspersed the people in an address to Gov. Gage." Some of these re- cantations, extorted by a force too powerful to be resisted at the time, did not prove permanent.
Dr. Paine soon after left for England, but returned in May, 1775, when he found so much denunciation of himself and others like him as tories, the battle of Lexington and Concord having in the meanwhile completely changed the aspect of af- fairs since he left here, that it was impossible for him to remain without surrendering all his royalist feelings, and he immedi- ately re-embarked for London. In November following, he accepted a commission as Surgeon in the British army, and joined the royal forces in America, serving in New York and Rhode Island. In 1782, he was appointed Surgeon-general of the army, and stationed at Halifax. He was afterwards a member of the New Brunswick Assembly from St. Johns', and Clerk of that body. He was subsequently commissioned Sur- geon-general of the Kings forces in America. The act of ban- ishment against him being rescinded in 1787, he returned to his native country, and resided in Salem, among the relatives of his wife, till 1793, when, on the death of his father, he return- to Worcester, and took possession of the family estate.
Since his first departure from his native town, how great had been the change! Dr. Paine had been denounced by Isaiah Thomas, in his vigilant organ of the patriot cause, the Massa- chusetts Spy of Oct. 20, 1775, as one of "those vermin, or worse, emmisaries of tyranny, crawling out of Boston to his forfeited seat in Worcester, there to avail himself of the good opinion of the people, in order to play his part : or by some method weaken the Union, or form some diabolical plan for the ministry to save the supremacy of parliament, under somo soft, sophistical, reconciliatory terms." The great offence of Dr. Paine's life, loyalty to the British sovereign, was at last for-
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given by the Legislature of Massachusetts, which in 1825, pass- ed a special act granting him by name the rights of an Ameri- can citizen. Of this privilege he never availed himself, except to hold property in his own name, hitherto retained in the'nom- inal possession of his brother, Judge Nathaniel Paine. Dr. Paine died April 19, 1833, aged 83, at the old family home- stead, " The Oaks "-an inflexible loyalist to the last, passing out of the world on the fifty-eighth anniversary of the Battle of Lexington.
Ebenezer Bradish of Cambridge, who married Dr. Paine's sister Hannah, was also a loyalist during the Revolution, after- wards Clerk of the Courts of Middlesex county, and died in 1818. Their daughter, Elizabeth Bradish, married Walter Burling of Natchez, Miss., of whose four children, the oldest, Caroline Burling, born in 1801, married in 1822, James Bra- zer, son of Samuel Brazer, merchant, of Worcester, and she married for her second husband, William Kinnicutt, brother of the late Judge Thomas Kinnicutt, of Worcester ; and her sister Harriet Paine Bradish, born in 1805, married Oct. 22, 1827, the late Judge Kinnicutt, who died in 1858, the latter's wife Harriet, who died Sept. 29, 1838, being the first person buried in Rural Cemetery. Mrs. Kinnicutt's sister, Frances Sophia Burling, married Sept. 4, 1825, Edward Joseph Vose, a lawyer here, who died in 1831. The latter was son of Solo- mon Vose of Augusta, Me., by his wife, Elizabeth P. Chandler, daughter of Rufus Chandler, and granddaughter of the last Judge John Chandler. Mrs. E. J. Vose afterwards married in 1836, Rev. Dr. Thomas H. Vail, now Bishop of Kansas. Her brother Timothy Paine Bradish, born in 1781, married in 1818 Charlotte Paine, daughter of the late Judge Nathaniel Paine.
Dr. William and Lois (Orne) Paine had five children : 1st, Esther Orne, born Aug. 29, 1774, married first Sept. 10, 1795, her first cousin, Joseph Cabot of Salem, father of Mayor Jo- seph Sebastian Cabot of that city, and of Wmn. Paine Cabot ; married, second, Nov. 5, 1811, Ichabod Tucker of Worcester, and died Jan. 29, 1854, aged 80. 2d, Harriet Paine, born Nov. 21, 1779, at Newport, R. I., married March 17, 1802, Joseph Warner Rose, an English landed proprietor and Consul at An-
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tigua, W. I. Of the children of the latter, Harriet (Paine) Rose, born in 1804, married in 1826, John Clarke Lee of Salem, of whose ten children, Rose Lee, born in 1835, married in 1854 Hon. Leverett Saltonstall of Salem, Josephine Lee married William Saltonstal and Mary Ann Lee married S. Endicott Peabody of the banking house of Morgan, Peabody & Co., of London, Eng. The other daughter of Joseph Warner and Harriet (Paine) Rose, married in 1842, her third cousin, Dr. George Chandler of Worcester. 3d, William Fitz Paine, born Nov. 2, 1783, at Halifax, N. S., graduated at Harvard in 1797, visited various countries in the East, in a mercan- tile capacity, and established a mercantile house at Batavia, Island of Java, where he died July 31, 1834. 4th, Elizabeth Putnam Paine, born June 26, 1786, at St. Johns, N. B., and died at Worcester, April 30, 1810. 5th, Frederick William Paine, born in Salem May 23, 1788, removed with his father to Worcester in 1793, and succeeded to the ancestral estate. He graduated at Harvard and received the honorary degree of A. M. in 1819, and after travelling for several years around the world, married May 5, 1822, Anne Cushing Sturgis, daughter of Hon. Russell and Elizabeth (Perkins) Sturgis of Boston, and neice of James and Thomas H. Perkins. This was the first marriage which took place in Boston after it became a city. He afterwards travelled extensively, visiting various countries. Among the numerous positions he filled were those of Representative to the General Court, Selectman, and Asses- sor, being chairman of the board of Selectmen five years of the ten he was an active member thereof, and being its chair- man the last year of the town organization in 1847-8. He was President of the old Worcester Mutual Fire Insurance Company for 38 years, from 1831 until his death in 1869, and an officer of many other business associations. He was noted for extensive literary research, and as a successful amateur in horticulture. The additions made by him to the extensive li- brary at " The Oaks," made it one of the largest and most val- uable private collections in the State. As an index of his early scholarship, it may be stated that at the age of fourteen, Fred- erick William corrected the proof sheets of the first edition of
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the New Testament printed in America in the original Greek language. This was printed and published in 1800 by Isaiah Thomas at the office of the Massachusetts Spy, the oldest printing office in the Commonwealth, Mr. Thomas for many years doing the largest business in the printing and publishing line of any person in the United States. A copy of this book owned in 1807 by Nathaniel Anthony Paine, is now in posses- sion of Mr. Daniel Seagrave. The title page bears the follow- ing imprint :
" Wigorniæ, Massachusettensi : Excudebat Isaias Thomas, singulatim 'et numerose eo vendita Officina suæ : April-1800."
Dr. Paine's brother, Judge Nathaniel Paine, was born Jan. 5, 1759, graduated at Harvard in 1785, studied law with Hon. John Sprague of Lancaster, practised several years in Groton, and returned to Worcester in 1785, when he became County Attorney, which office he filled until 1801 when he was appoint- ed Judge of Probate, holding the latter office until 1836. He married Dec. 18, 1785, his cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Sher- iff Gardner Chandler. Judge Paine died Oct. 7, 1840, aged nearly 81. His residence was on the north corner of Main and Pleasant streets, and his old mansion, removed in 1844 to make way for the brick block then erected on its site by his son Charles, now stands on the west side of Salem street. The Judge had his private office in a small building which stood on the corner just southeast of his residence. His estate com- prised nearly one hundred acres of land, (held in right of his wife,) bounded east and south by Main and Pleasant streets, and extending west and north nearly or quite to Fruit and Elm streets. The children of Judge Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Chandler) Paine were : 1st, Nancy Leonard Paine, born Nov. 25, 1786, died Jan. 8, 1802; 2d, Charlotte Paine, born Aug. 9, 1788, died Dec. 3, 1866, married Sept. 23, 1818, Timothy Bradish, and they had Walter Burling Bradish, who was born at Natchez, Miss., Dec. 14, 1820, and died Jan. 1856 ; 3d, Na- thaniel Anthony Paine, born Nov. 29, 1791, died Feb. 19, 1819 ; 4th, Sarah Chandler Paine, born Nov. 20, 1794, died Oct. 15, 1840 ; 5th, Maj. Gardner Paine, born May 23, 1799, died Jan. 29, 1854, married Oct. 11, 1831, Emily Baker, daughter of
12
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Eliphalet and Anne Baker of Dedham ; 6th, Henry Paine, law- yer, born Aug. 12, 1804, died April 21, 1844 ; 7th, Charles, (twin brother of Henry,) inherited the paternal estate, died Aug. 8, 1866, married first in 1841, Elizabeth Ferguson, mar- ried second in 1843, Hannah Worthington Kingsbury of Spring- field, and married third in 1848, Margaret Porter Webb of Salem. Charles and Hannah (Worthington) Paine's daughter Alice W., born in 1847, married June 3, 1873, James C. Davis of Boston, and Charles and Margaret Paine's daughter Eliza- beth F. Paine, born in 1849, married June 12, 1872, William W. Chamberlain, son of Henry H. Chamberlin of Worcester.
Maj. Gardner and Emily (Baker) Paine had : 1st, Nathaniel Paine, born Aug. 6, 1832, cashier of the City Bank since 1857, married June 14, 1864, Susan Maria, daughter of Willet Brad- ley Barnes of New Haven, Ct .; 2d, Anne Eliza Paine, born Jan. 20, 1835.
Frederick William and Anne Cushing (Sturgis) Paine had six children : 1st, William Russell Paine, born Jan. 29, 1823, died Jan. 9, 1877, married April 12, 1855, Frances Thomas Crocker, daughter of William A. Crocker of Taunton, and great-granddaughter of Isaiah Thomas LL. D., of Worcester, and had five children ; 5d, Elizabeth Orne, married in 1851, married her first cousin, Henry Parkman Sturgis now of Spain; 3d, James Perkins, born Dec. 16, 1827, married Sarah Loring Turner of Boston, now residing on a portion of the ancestral estate, and has four children ; 4th, Mary Pickard, married in 1851 Allyn Weston of Duxbury, and died Sept. 1, 1853; 5th, Geo. Sturgis, born June 4, 1833, graduated at Harvard in 1853, made the tour of Europe in 1854, and again in 1858-59, and is a clergyman of the Episcopal Church, now residing at " The Oaks," with his mother; 6th, Anne Cushing Sturgis, born March 5, 1836, died Nov. 19, 1874. Their father, Frederick William Paine, died Sept. 16, 1869, in his 82d year, and their mother still survives, hale and vigorous, in her 80th year.
THE PUTNAM FAMILY.
Hon. James Putnam, the distinguished lawyer of Worcester during the last quarter of a century preceding the Revolution,
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was born in that part of Salem, now Danvers, in 1725, gradu- atcd at Harvard University in 1746, studied law with Chief Justice Edmund Trowbridge at Cambridge, (uncle of Dea. William Trowbridge of Worcester,) and settled in Worcester in 1749, where he became the peer of the ablest lawyers of his time in New England, succeeding Trowbridge as Attorney Gen- eral of the Province, when the latter became Chief Justice. James Putnam was married by Chief Justice Stephen Sewall, Sept. 20, 1754, to Elizabeth Chandler, daughter of Judge John and Hannah (Gardner) Chandler, thus becoming, on settling here, a brother-in-law of the last Judge John Chandler, Sheriff Gardner Chandler, and Hon. Timothy Paine. Attorney Gen- eral Putnam resided, while in Worcester, on the spot after- wards occupied by the late Chief Justice Charles Allen, corner of Main and Park streets, his estate, which was confiscated at the Revolution, comprising about eighty acres southerly and easterly of Main and Park streets, the first occupants after Mr. Putnam left being successively Hon. Joseph Allen and Col. Samuel Flagg, the old house being burned in 1786 while Col. Flagg resided there. It was immediately rebuilt, the owner of the estate previous to Judge Allen being Daniel Clapp, Regis- ter of Deeds from 1784 to 1816. Mr. Putnam had his law office on the grounds of his brother-in-law, Sheriff Gardner Chandler, on the opposite side of Main street, just in front of the present residence of Dr. Joseph Sargent. In this office John Adams, afterwards President of the United States, studi- ed law in 1755, '56, and '57, and boarded in Mr. Putnam's family while he was keeping the Grammar School of the vil- lage, then just started, in a small building afterwards convert- ed into a dwelling, which stood on the north corner of Main and Mechanic streets. When asked, in 1758, by Col. Ephraim Doolittle and Nathan Baldwin, leading patriots here, to settle in Worcester as an opponent to the loyalists and office holders, the Chandlers, Putnam, and Paine, John Adams declined, giv- ing among other reasons, in his own words, " that the Chand- lers were worthy people, and discharged the duties of their offices well, I envied not their felicity, and had no desire to set myself in opposition to them, especially to Mr. Putnam, who
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had married a beautiful daughter of that family, and had treated me with civility and kindness."
. Attorney General Putnam was termed by Chief Justice Par- sons, " the best lawyer in North America." He was Judge of the Court of General Sessions, colonel of a regiment, and fill- ed many local offices, besides those of enlarged responsibility. During the exciting controversies in the town meetings here preceding the Revolution, he took the lead and threw the whole weight and influence of his reputation and character as an eloquent orator and legal advocate, to sustain the royal gov- ernment, and of course was among the proscribed. He accom- panied the British army to New York, and then went to Hali- fax. In 1784 he was appointed a member of the Council of New Brunswick, and Judge of the Supreme Court of that Province. He resided in the city of St. John, and retained the office of Judge until his death Oct. 23, 1789, aged 64 yrs.
The children of James and Elizabeth (Chandler) Putnam were : 1st, James Putnam, Jr., born Nov. 15, 1756, graduated at Harvard in 1774, refugee with his father in 1775, " one of the eighteen country gentlemen who were driven to Boston," died in England in 1838 while a member of the household of the Duke of Kent, aged 82, leaving no issue ; 2d, John Put- nam, born 1758, died young : 3d. Ebenezer Putnam, born Jan. 26, 1763, married Dec. 2, 1786, Elizabeth Chandler, daughter of Judge John and Mary (Church) Chandler, and resided in St. John, N. B., where Ebenezer died in 1798, aged 35; and on a tombstone in Mechanic street burying ground in Worces- ter is this inscription, " Died Jan. 18, 1820, Elizabeth, relic of Ebenezer Putnam of St. John, N. B., aged 50," and on another near it, " Died Aug. 18, 1810, James Putnam, son of Ebenezer and Elizabeth Putnam, late of St. John, N. B., and grandson of Hon. James Putnam, formerly of Worcester, aged 26, a graduate of Harvard University."
After Ebenezer Putnam's death at St. John in 1798, his wid- ow Elizabeth returned to Worcester and lived with her sister, Mrs. Stanton. Besides their son James, who died of rheu- matic fever, while a medical student with Dr. Nathan Smith at Dartmouth College in 1810, Ebenezer and Elizabeth Putnam had the following children :
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1st, John Chandler Putnam, born in 1792, merchant in Bos- ton, married Abby Smith, and died in 1840, at Hartford ; 2d, Charles S. Putnam, married Eleanor Millidge of Annapolis, N. S., died in 1837, and had three children ; 3d, Francis Ebenezer Putnam, who married Anne Carrie of St. Andrew, N. B., and died in Boston in 1839, was a graduate of Harvard College, and a lawyer.
The three children of Charles S. and Eleanor (Millidge) Putnam are: John, lawyer in London, Eng .; 2d, Elizabeth, married Robert Lloyd in London, Eng .; 3d, Fanny, married Rev. Wm. Shore, Eng.
The Putnams are descendants of John and Priscilla Putnam, who came from Buckinghamshire, England, in 1634, and set- tled in that part of Salem, now Danvers, with three children, Thomas, Nathaniel, and John, between four and eighteen years old; and a daughter, Elizabeth, was born after their arrival. The father died Dec. 30, 1662. John, Jr., who was born in 1630, was a lieutenant, and Representative in the General Court. He married, Sept. 3, 1652, Rebecca Prince, by whom he had ten children, born in Salem between 1653 and 1673, as follows : Rebecca, Sarah, Priscilla, Jonathan, James, Hannah, Eleazer, John, Joanna, and Ruth. "Of these, James, born Sept. 4, 1661, was grandfather of Hon. James Putnam, the distinguished loy- alist and lawyer of Worcester ; the Attorney General's father, born in Feb. 1690, the third of nine children, being also named James. As the Attorney General had a son and a grandson of the same name, there were thus five generations of James Put- nams, from the son of the second John of Salem, to the last one who sleeps in the Mechanic street burial ground of Wor- cester. One branch of the descendants of the first Thomas, born in England in 1616, who had three sons, Sergeant Thom- as, Dea. Edward, and Joseph, settled in Sutton, and of these, the distinguished Maj. Gen. Rufus Putnam, born in Sutton in 1738, is the grandson of Dea. Edward and Mary (Holton) Put- nam, and son of Elisha Putnam, the latter being born in Salem Nov. 3, 1685. The celebrated revolutionary hero, Maj. Gen: Israel Putnam, who was born in Salem in 1718, and removed to Pomfret, Ct., in 1739, and astonished the world by his dar-
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