"OLD PUT," THE PATRIOT




CHAPTER I

BIRTHPLACE AND YOUTH


This is the life story of one who was born on a farm, and died on a
farm, yet who achieved a world-wide fame through his military exploits.
It has been told many times, it will be told for centuries yet to come;
for the world loves a man of high emprise, and such was Israel Putnam,
the hero of this story.

He was born January 7, 1718, in Danvers, then known as Salem Village,
Province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England. His father's Christian
name was Joseph, his mother's Elizabeth, and Israel (as he was called at
baptism, after his maternal grandfather, Israel Porter) was the
great-grandson of his first American ancestor, John Putnam, who had
come from England, where the original name of the family was Puttenham.
He had settled at Salem more than eighty years before, and his son,
Thomas, built, in 1648, the house in which Israel was born in 1718. On
the death of Thomas it had become the property of Joseph, who first
occupied it in 1690, after his marriage to Elizabeth Porter.

Here the young couple passed through the perilous "witchcraft times,"
during the worst period of which, in 1692 (it is a tradition in the