In addition to our English Putman/Putnam families, there are two other large groups of Putmans in America; one German and one Dutch. This is a brief early history of the German Putman Family in America.
As with our family, many early settlers in America could not read nor write and their names were recorded the way the sounded to county court clerks who wrote up the early deeds and other papers. It seems that the German Putmans descend from a family in the German Palatinate originally spelled Boutemont which was French and then later 'Germanized' to Buttman, and then 'Anglicized' in America to Putman as the German B sounds like the English P. Boutemont was pronounced Bootmon which changed quickly to Putman here.
The first of the family to come to America was Andreas or Andrew. He came on the ship Osgood and landed in Philadelphia on September 29, 1750.
On September 25, 1751 Philip Boudemont arrived in Philadelphia on the Phoenix from Rotterdam by way of Portsmouth, England.
Based on a great deal of research by Dick Heller of Mission, Texas and Patricia McKinna of Houston, Texas, Bettie Cornell of Frederick, Maryland, and Bill and Betty Eynon we are able to begin to sort out the early history of this family.
The Boudemonts were French Huguenots that had fled just across the border into Germany in the early 1600s. The name was originally Boutemont and that was changed into the more Germanic spelling like many others in the Paletinate area of Southwest Germany on the French Border.
The earliest member of the family we can trace was Jacob Boudemont.
ANDREW PUTMAN of Maryland & Pennsylvania
PHILIP JACOB PUTMAN of Maryland & Virginia
PETER PUTMAN of Virginia
PHILIP PUTMAN of Ohio
