family), Joseph Putnam kept a loaded musket at his bedside every night
and his swiftest horse saddled in the stable, ready for a fight or a
flight in case the witch-hunters should come to carry him off to jail.
They had accused his sister, who saved her life only by fleeing to the
wilderness and remaining in hiding until the insane furor was over. He
and his wife survived that gloomy period, and in the ancestral homestead
lived happily for more than thirty years, raising a "baker's dozen" of
children, of whom Israel was the eleventh.

On both the maternal and paternal side Israel Putnam was descended from
a line of sturdy, prosperous farmers. The grandfather whose name he bore
had married a daughter of William Hathorne, who came from England and
settled in Salem about the year 1630, and who was an ancestor of the
famous romancist Nathaniel Hawthorne. John Hathorne, son of William, was
a military man and a magistrate. He presided at the infamous witchcraft
trials in Salem, and, like the near relatives of Joseph Putnam, looked
with severe disfavor upon any one who showed sympathy for the persecuted
witches.

Joseph Putnam died in 1723, leaving his widow with eleven surviving
children, nine older than Israel, who was then but five years of age,
and one, little Mehitable, only three. Several of the older children
were already married, and when, in 1727, Mrs. Putnam took a second
husband, one Captain Thomas Perley, of Boxford, only the younger members
of her family went with her to live in the new home. There Israel
resided until he was about eighteen, and Boxford being only a few miles
distant from his birthplace, in the same county (Essex), he made
frequent visits to the old farm, to which he finally returned as part
owner before he attained his majority.