The Green Mountain State. The area was first settled by the French in the 1600s, and the earliest English settlement was in 1724 in what is now Brattleboro. In the middle 1700s, New Hampshire felt it owned the area, but England declared it a part of New York. In 1776, Vermont declared its independence from New York. In 1777, Vermont declared itself an independent Republic and it remained so throughout the Revolutionary War. While it was not one of the original 13 colonies, it did agree to Statehood in 1791 and became the 14th state.
Almost all of the Putnams and Putmans in Vermont were originally from the Massachusetts family and this is still true today. There was one other family from England, that of Thomas Putnam who came to America in the 1780s and settled in Hartford, Connecticut before heading north. The only member of the ‘Southern branch’ of the family to go to Vermont is most likely myself when I go skiing up there.
Many of the Massachusetts Putnams moved from the Salem area to the middle part of the State into Worcester County during the early and mid 1700. They settled in villages like New Salem to the North and Sutton to the South. Prior to the revolution, many hoofed it across the line into southern New Hampshire and then a few miles westward into southern Vermont. There were Putnams in Vermont by the 1770s. During this time there were constant land problems with New York State. After the Revolution, many Vermonters were deeded lands in central New York to make this all up to them. So, by the time the first census came out in 1790, many Putnams had been there and moved on to New York. Benajah, Ephraim, Abijah, Clark, Gideon, Parks, Jonas and other Putnams had been in Vermont early on, but moved to Albany, Oneida and Clinton Counties in New York after the Revolutionary War. Those that were still here in 1790 are the families I will begin with in this section.
When we begin with the 1790 Census, we will meet the Putnams (often spelled Putman) who first came over from New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Many remained here, but many more continued to move westward to New York for better farmlands.