Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 24.

[p. 33] it would seem most probable to lie in the valley of Meetinghouse brook, near and on the same side of the road as the present ‘Home for the Aged.’ At that time there was no Winthrop street. Parson Turell had purchased his house fifty years before, which was between present Rural avenue and Winthrop street. The original portion of the Puffer house (formerly Swan, now the ‘Home’) built in 1689, was till 1872 nearer the street and to the brook, which left a sufficient space between for an acre and a half of narrow frontage (as was also Turell's). It seems more probable, however, that it was farther west on the lower ground, which was well situated for a ‘potter's shop and works,’ mentioned in the mortgage to John Andros. It is a matter of record that there was clay in the land directly opposite, and the high bank now in evidence suggests a probable excavation beside it.

A conveyance (mortgage) of the same bounded land, ‘two acres more or less, Dwelling house, barn, and Potter's shop and works thereon standing,’ was made by Putnam to ‘John Andros of Marblehead, Shoreman, for his Proper Debt.’ At Henry Putnam's request, Andros had become bound with him to Ann Devereaux of Marblehead in the sum of forty pounds, August 24, 1774.

Another of twenty pounds upon the pasture land was given by Putnam to Ebenezer Turell (the Medford minister) whose ‘upland and meadow’ adjoined.

In August, 1773, Putnam sold his pew, ‘number 36,’ in the third meeting-house to Jonathan Patten for six pounds, describing it as the ‘forty-sixth choice.’ He was then sixty-seven years old, and probably for eight years a resident of Medford, and had a son, Eleazer, among the Medford minute-men; and another (Henry, Jr.) in the Danvers company that marched through Medford to Lexington. From his home in Medford (wherever it was) the old veteran of Louisburg, then seventy years of age, followed them to take part in the fray, leaving behind the wife Hannah he so romantically acquired