Gen. Rufus Putnam (1738-1824)

He was born in Sutton, Massachusetts. He enlisted in local provincial regiments and fought in the French & Indian War, serving throughout the campaigns of 1757-60. After the French surrendered to the British at Montreal he married (his first of two wives) and became a farmer at New Braintree. At the same time he began to study mathematics and quickly became proficient in navigation and surveying. In 1773, he sailed to east Florida to explore lands that were supposed to have been granted to provincial officers and soldiers like himself who had fought in the French & Indian War. On arriving in Pensacola he found that no such grant had been made and was appointed Deputy Surveyor of the province. On his return to Massachusetts, he was made Lieutenant-Colonel in one of the first regiments that was raised after the Battle of Lexington (1775) and fought throughout the Revolution. In 1778, with his cousin Israel Putnam, he superintended the construction of the fortification at West Point. He attained the rank of Brigadier-General, was a member of legislature for several years, and acted as aide-de-camp to Gen. Benjamin Lincoln in quelling Shay's Rebellion in 1787.

At Boston in 1786, he was among those who established the Ohio Company of Associates with the purchase of 1.5-million acres, and he founded the town Marietta in 1788 (the first permanent settlement in the eastern part of the Northwest Territory) where he completed his new home, the Putnam House, two years later (1790). He was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of the Territory and Brigadier-General under General Anthony Wayne to act against the Indians, concluding an important treaty with eight tribes.  He was made Surveyor-General of the United States in 1793 and held the post for ten years. He was deeply religious and formed the first Bible society west of the Alleghanies. His manuscript diary is preserved in the Astor Library in New York. He died at at his home in Marietta.