Submitted by Laura Kilduff

Huron County First Family Member #163

UZZIEL PUTNAM and his wife Mary moved from New Salem, Massachusetts, to Wardsboro, Windham County, Vermont before 1790. In 1796, they moved to Oneida County, New York and then to Adams, Jefferson County. Their son DANIEL BALDWIN PUTNAM, at the age of eighteen years , was employed in lumbering on the St. Lawrence River. After three years having saved his earnings he joined his father and family in Jefferson County where he assisted in the construction of a boat at Sacketts Harbor. In the spring of 1811 the Putnam with two other family left Sacketts Harbor, NY by a boat built expressly for the occasion. On reaching Niagra Falls the boat was hauled around the Falls and the party proceeded up Lake Erie on the Canadian side until they reached Point Pelee . From that point they crossed Lake Erie to Sandusky Bay and then on to where Sandusky City is now. Daniel remained with a man in the area, while the rest of the family traveled on to Detroit, MI, to sell their boat. After spending the winter in Detroit they returned to Huron County, Ohio, and settled in Margaretta Township. It was there that Uzziel’s wife, Mary and their son Orlean, along with eleven others were kidnaped by Indians. Five of those were killed and eight carried off to Detroit to be ransomed later in the summer. Mary and her son Orlean were unharmed and were able to returned to their home after the ordeal. In 1816 Uzziel moved his family to Sandusky, Ohio, and in the winter of 1821, after a sleigh accident, Uzziel died.

Daniel Baldwin Putnam served in the war of 1812 and in 1815 he married LOUISA MARIE ENSIGN at Margaretta Township, Ohio. In 1816, their daughter, Clatha, was born. Daniel farmed the land in Huron County, Ohio, until 1836 when he moved his wife and eight children to Hillsdale County, Michigan, where he had received land for his service in the War of 1812. Louisa died in 1840 and was buried in Hillsdale County. Daniel remarried in 1842 and in 1854 moved to Legrand, Marshall County, Iowa where he died at the age of 90 years while living with his daughter, Phoebe Ann Lockwood.

When CALTHA PUTNAM was twenty years of age, she moved to Michigan and in 1839 she married JOSEPH PORTER ALBEE. For seven years they lived happily and had three children when they decided to move once again. The family went to Illinois and settled down on the prairie until 1850 when Joseph left for California and ended up in Trinity County, California, supplying the town of Weaverville with milk. In October of 1852, Caltha with her family of three children attempted the great task of traveling to California. She went from Chicago to New York City and took a steamer on the Vanderbilt Route and crossed the Isthmus of Panama on mules. When the waters of the Pacific were reached, she came to San Francisco, California on the old steamer called the Pacific and went on to Trinity County to join her husband. In the fall of 1853 the family came over the mountains and settled on Table Bluff in Humboldt County living there until 1855 when they moved to Arcata and then one year later to Redwood Creek where her husband Joseph was killed by Indians leaving her a widow with eight children in 1862.

LAURA AMANDA ALBEE, the sister of Joseph P. Albee, was born in Ohio in 1817. In 1835, she married JOHNATHAN DUNHAM in Ohio where they farmed and raised a family of five children. The family moved to Illinois in 1849 where two more children were born. In 1854, they moved to Iowa where my great-grandmother, Maria Annie Dunham, was born. In 1859 the family decided to move once again this time by ox team to California. Their oldest son Joseph had his eighteenth birthday in Salt Lake City. They arrived in Millville, Shasta County, California that same year. Maria Anne Dunham, daughter of Laura and Johnathan Dunham, and Lincoln Hamlin Albee, son of Caltha and Joseph Albee, were married at Millville, California, in 1883. They were my great-grandparents.