According to a persistent local tradition which did not originate with the Putnams, Margaret Blennerhassett wielded her diamond ring to immortalize the occasion. The tale has flourished through the years, a lush and spreading vine with many branches and no roots. 

One version portrays Mrs. Blennerhassett scratching her initials onto one of the ballroom windowpanes along with those of her host, supplying also the year and date of the party. (What Mrs. Putnam thought of this public linking is not mentioned). A second variation imagines Margaret etching A.W. Putnam, 1800". In still another, she joins her initials to those of Aaron Burr either before or after they stood together watching her mansion bum in the distance. Alas for the romantics, Mrs. Blennerhassett was in the Mississippi Territory and Burr in Europe when that tragic event took place. Yet another account declares Margaret's glass message to posterity read, `To our gracious host. Margaret Blennerhassett." The last of the Putnam-Housers, Mr. James H. Houser, Jr., has vigorously denied the validity of the tale: 

My grandmother, Mary Putnam Houser, was born in that ... house in 1860, [and] spent almost all her 92 years there. No one knew more about the place or took more pride in the historical background of it and the Putnams who went before, than she. Her reaction to Mrs. B's alleged diamond-scratched literary effort on glass?... `rubbish. My father and reclusive Uncle Dana grew up in the house; Dana hardly ever left it, even for a single overnight - he died at age 87. Both agreed the story was pure fiction. (James H. Houser, Jr., to Ms. Janice Richardson [reporter for The Parkersburg Sentinel, Wilmington, Delaware, 12 January 1987, photocopy in Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park archives).

The windowpane folktale attained a milestone of sorts when it reached national print, appearing as a paragraph in a self-help / information bestseller: `The Putnam family of Belpre, 0., has an 1801 signature of Margaret Blennerhassett, wife of Aaron Burr's coconspirator [sic] against the U.S. government. She scratched her name on one of the windows of their old house with her diamond ring." (David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, comps., The People's Almanac #2 [New York, 1978], 230. 

What originally may have sparked the myth is a Maple Shade windowpane - still preserved in the family which bears the etched words, A.W. Putnam Belpre June 2 1820". 

Another less well-known, but equally dubious, oral tradition concerns the placement of the ballroom. It relates how the architectural custom ca. 1800 decreed that the taller rooms of a fine home be located downstairs and the low-ceilinged chambers on the second floor. At the Putnam house-raising, however, the workers drank too freely of the apple jack provided for their refreshment. As a result, the high-ceilinged chambers, including the ballroom, found themselves on the upper level. (25 November 1967 personal interview of Bernice Weaver [Mrs. Ralph] Hayes by Ray Swick, Belpre, Ohio). Mrs. Hayes` source was her grandfather who rented part of the Putnam farm and supposedly heard the story from William Pin Putnam, Waldo's firstborn. 

There can, in fact, be little substance to this tale. Considering the length of time necessary to raise the framework of the house, its workmen would have had to have been intoxicated for days to have committed such an error in judgment, a breach in behavior Waldo Putnam would never have tolerated. In addition, ballrooms of the period were not limited by architectural custom to the ground floor. (14 October 1999 personal telephone interview of Paul D. Marshall, historical architect, by Ray Swick).