Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/120

 284 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS ISRAEL PUTNAM and the actual world about him. (i 718-1790) ISRAEL Putnam, the redoubtable hero of Indian and French ad- venture in the old colonial wars, the survivor of many a revolutionary fight, was born at Salem, Mass., Jan- uary 7, 1 718. His grandfather, from the south of England, was one of the first settlers of the place. The boy was brought up with his father on the farm. He had little educa- tion in literature ; much in the de- velopment of a hardy, vigorous con- stitution, in his contest with the soil He was fond of athletic exercises, an adept in running and wrestling, in which he proved himself more than a match for his village companions. The story is told of his being insulted for his rusticity, on his first visit to Boston, by a youth of twice his size, when he taught the citizen better manners by a sound flogging. Before he was of age, he was married to the daughter of John Pope, of Salem, and presently removed with his wife to a farm in the town of Pomfret, in Eastern Connecticut. His rugged powers were, no doubt, sufficiently taxed in the ordinary labors of the field. In those days the farmer had enemies to en- counter, which have since vanished from the land. The well-known fable of iEsop, of the boy and the wolf, had then a literal application. Every child in the days of our fathers knew the story of Putnam, and the she-wolf which he dragged from its den. This and similar tales go far to make up the popular reputation of the hero, and it was as a man of the peo- ple that Putnam first appears upon the public scene. On the breaking out of the old French war, as it was termed, at the age of thirty-seven, he drew together a band of his neighbors and reported himself with the Connecticut contingent before Crown Point. He appears to have been em- ployed in this service under Major Rogers, the celebrated partisan " ranger," whose life he is said to have saved in an encounter with a stalwart Frenchman. Putnam conducted himself as a man of resources and valor in this mixed species of war- fare, in achieving a reputation which brought him, in 1757, the commission of a major from the Connecticut Legislature. It was the year of the memorable mas- sacre of Fort William Henry. Putnam was with the forces whose headquarters were at the neighboring Fort Edward, under command of General Webb, and