Note 1 — JOURNAL OF A TOUR
Reading edition
General Rufus Putnam (born in Massachusetts, 1738) served in the French and Indian War, and later with distinction in the Revolution. He is best known to history as the superintendent of the Ohio Company and the founder of the soldier-colony at Marietta. Self-educated, and rising to prominence by force of will and character, his accomplishments in engineering and surveying, and his services to Western development, were valuable. Washington appointed him surveyor-general for the United States (1793), which position he held for ten years, when removed as a Federalist by Jefferson. His interests during all the later years of his life were bound up with those of Ohio and the Marietta settlement. At his death (1824) he was (with the exception of Lafayette) the last surviving general officer of the Revolutionary army.—Ed.