Putnam, James Osborne

Life Span
to
    Full name
    John Osborne Putnam
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Estimated
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    2
    Family
    Harvey Putnam (father), Myra Osborne (mother), Harriet Foster (first wife, 1842), Kate F. Worthington (second wife, 1855)
    Education
    Yale
    Other
    Other Education
    Hamilton College, NY
    Occupation
    Politician
    Diplomat
    Attorney or Judge
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Republican
    American Party (Know Nothings or Nativists)
    Other Affiliations
    Nativists (Know Nothings)
    Government
    Fillmore Administration (1850-53)
    Lincoln Administration (1861-65)
    Johnson Administration (1865-69)
    Hayes Administration (1877-81)
    Diplomat
    State legislature

    James Osborne Putnam (Notable Americans)

    Reference
    PUTNAM, James Osborne, diplomatist, was born in Attica, N.Y., July 4, 1818 ; son of Harvey and Myra (Osborne) Putnam, and a descendant, in the eighth generation, of John and Priscilla Putnam, who emigrated from Buckinghamshire, England, in 1634 and settled in Salem, Mass. He passed his freshman and sophomore years in Hamilton college, 1837-38, and entered the Yale junior class of 1839, and was graduated as of that class in 1865, receiving his A.M. degree the same year. He studied law in his father's office; was admitted to the bar in 1842; practiced in Buffalo, N.Y., and was postmaster of that city, 1851-53. He was married Jan. 5, 1842, to Harriet Foster, daughter of George and Harriet (Foster) Palmer of Buffalo; and secondly, March 15, 1855, to Kate F., daughter of the Rev. Worthington and Katherine (Green) Wright of Woodstock, Vt. He was a member of the New York state senate, 1854- 55, where he originated the bill that became a law, requiring the title of church property to be vested in trustees. He was defeated as the American party nominee for secretary of state in 1857; was a presidential elector from the state-at-large on the Lincoln and Hamlin ticket in 1860; U.S. consul at Havre, France, 1861-66; U.S. minister to Belgium, 1880-82, and US delegate to the International Industrial Property congress at Paris in 1881. He is the author of: Orations Speeches and Miscellanies (1880). In 1903 he still held the position of chancellor of the University of Buffalo, which he had occupied for many years.
    Rossiter Johnson, ed., "Putnam, James Osborne," The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, vol. 8 (Boston: The Biographical Society, 1904).
    How to Cite This Page: "Putnam, James Osborne," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/34562.