old Put" the Patriot

Frederick A. Ober's 1904 biography resurrects Israel Putnam, the blacksmith-turned-revolutionary general whose legend helped forge American identity. Born in Salem Village in 1718, Putnam was the stuff of frontier mythology: a man who famously fought wolves with his bare hands, refused to retreat when British forces burned his Connecticut farm, and led charging troops up the slopes of Bunker Hill despite being in his sixties. Ober writes with the reverent urgency of someone who understood these stories were fading from living memory. This isn't sanitized history - it's the raw, adventurous narrative of how one man's courage became a beacon for a young nation. The prose crackles with the muscular patriotism of an era that still remembered the Revolution as urgent history rather than distant legend. For readers craving authentic American mythology, "Old Put" delivers the real flesh-and-blood heroes behind the founding myths - flawed, fearless, and utterly devoted to the cause of liberty.