"MAPLE
SHADE"
The Story of Blennerhassett Island's Putnam-Houser House
by Ray Swick
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair the rest of his life."
If any Ohio Valley family ever defined this maxim, it was the Belpre, Ohio, Putnams. For nearly two centuries they lived in their home high on a bluff above the Ohio, building, furnishing, watching, showing, and repairing it until they died out, leaving the task to others. But in the process, they created a unique landmark, an historical and architectural treasure which continues to fascinate those who have come after them.
The Putnams, in the persons of Colonel Israel (1740-1812) and his second son Aaron Waldo (1767-1822), were among Belpre's first settlers. The town was founded in April 1789 under the auspices of the Boston based Ohio Company of Associates in which the two Putnams were shareholders. Father and son had emigrated from Pomfret, Connecticut, where Putnam roots ran deep into New England's stony soil. Their first American ancestor had arrived in Massachusetts sometime between 1627 and 1641. The family gained national distinction toward the end of the eighteenth century with the martial exploits of Colonel Israel's father, the famous Revolutionary War general, Israel Putnam.
Colonel Israel re-crossed the mountains in the fall of 1790 to bring his family to their new home. He delayed his return until 1795, however, because of the January 1791 breaking out of an Indian war. But Aaron Waldo (who was called by his middle name) stayed in Belpre to brave the rigors of life during that hazardous period. He experienced no less than three harrowing escapes from being captured or killed by Indians. On 24 June 1791, having managed to dodge Indian arrows but not Cupid's, he married one of the settlement's most desirable women, Charlotte Loring, the 18-year-old daughter of Judge Daniel Loring, formerly of Salem, Massachusetts. The following year, the Putnams' first child, William Pitt, was born.
Sometime during the war, which would drag
on into summer 1795, Waldo moved his little family onto his farm - 800 rich, level acres he had drawn as his share of the Ohio Company's land. It was situated on the banks of the Ohio one-half mile downstream from Belpre's main fortification, "Farmers Castle," in what was called "the middle settlement". There Waldo, his wife and children (a daughter had been born in 1794) lived in a small riverbank stockade he had built for their protection.
When peace finally arrived, he was free to begin, unhampered by an enemy's hostility, full development of his land. Within a few years, through hard work, Yankee ingenuity, and skilled farming knowledge, he succeeded in transforming a wilderness tract into a thriving New England homestead - the kind of farm which fevered emigrants' dreams. Where dark stands of huge timber had towered over the land, fields appeared producing bumper crops of wheat and corn "A thriving dairy was added to his other operations, composed of the cows raised from his father's famous Harlem breed, and celebrated for their rich milk."
If Putnam's crops were bountiful and his dairy admirable, his orchards seemed astonishing. The historian Dr. Samuel P. Hildreth described them in his 1852 biographical sketch of Putnam:
In a few years he had a large plantation under fence, and divided into fields, several acres of orchard, composed of the best varieties of the fruits New England and Middle states, sent out in 1795, by his brother Israel, who selected them with great care, and packed them with bees-wax, so that few, if any of the scions failed to grow... Fruit trees in the virgin soil of the Ohio bottoms, grew with astonishing rapidity, and in six or eight years were loaded with apples. The peach often produced the second year from the pit, bearing fruit of a size and quality not now seen in Ohio.... Before temperance societies were known, large orchards of fifteen or twenty acres, were devoted to the manufacture of peach brandy, which bore a liberal price on the borders of the Mississippi, and was an article of export [from Belpre]. Ibid., 378.
Their fields, livestock, orchards, and even their steadily increasing number of children were all indisputable proofs of the Putnams' prosperity. Its capstone, however, was the new family seat they chose to build for themselves on the high ground overlooking their old log cabin. Its construction, which must have begun in the late 1790s, is cloaked in mystery. Despite the existence of an extensive collection of family manuscripts, no contemporary written record of its year of completion is known. A strong local tradition of 1800 has evolved into the accepted date.
Colorful traditions cluster around this house as they do any structure so venerable and so old. One holds that Colonel Israel built it for his son and daughter-in-law. Whoever paid the bills, the house, upon being finished, displayed the classic image of New England federal style architecture. A white-painted clapboard structure of post-and-beam type construction held together not by iron nails but tree nails (i.e., tapered wood pegs), it rose two-and-one-half stories high. Containing six rooms - three up, three down - its exterior walls measured 31 by 43 feet.
Detail work added to the beauty of the whole while testifying to the owners' good taste. The front door was impressive in its design, exhibiting side lights of 15 sections each and a transom of eight sections. The windows boasted, a pattern of 12 lights over 8. The interior doors were pine (grained to simulate hardwoods), and included among their number a most beautiful, four sectioned, paneled folding one. The manse's elegantly carved wooden fireplaces, along with a gracefully curving staircase opposite the front door, must have riveted visitors' eyes.
Waldo and Charlotte doubtless were well pleased with their new home. It stood not only as the embodiment of their industry and pride, but also as a symbol of how the hope offered by the West for a new life (what later would be termed "the American dream") could come true - how, by work and ambition, an emigrant there could find both happiness and prosperity. Fine property is a beacon for property-less men. Dr. Hildreth recognized this when he wrote how
As early as 1802, or 1803, the log cabins of several of the farmers at Belpre, were abandoned, and large, commodious houses of wood or brick, built in their place. Mr. Putnam was one of the first to make improvements of this kind; and his capacious, white house, surrounded by orchards, on the margin of the plain, or second bottom, became a conspicuous and beautiful object to travelers on the 'Belle riviere', who saw little else but the wilderness and the log huts of the new settlers, from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati. Belpre, at this period, was like an oasis in the desert, the only spot where the eye could rest with delight.
The house, either from its inception or soon after, was christened "Maple Shade." And from the beginning its liveliest and, ultimately, most famous part was the ballroom. For an Ohio frontier family to possess such a chamber indicated elevated social status not to mention a convivial desire for company (or "society" in the parlance of the day).
Measuring 15 by 43 feet, and extending across the entire front of the second floor, the ballroom played a significant role in the lives of the Putnams and in local history. Waldo and his wife were a happy couple and Mrs. Putnam proved a polished hostess, one well suited to entertaining her and her husband's friends.
The completion of Maple Shade was celebrated by a "housewarming" ball. That night, so a family member long afterwards recalled, the merrymakers danced the minuet and Virginia reel.
The gathering was such "a great social event for the whole country..." that guests attended "from the neighboring towns of Marietta and Athens and for forty miles around."Few area homes in this early period possessed such specifically dedicated entertainment spaces. The interests of practicality (most specifically the needs of an expanding family), however, dictated that Maple Shade's ballroom double as a bedroom. It was furnished with two four-poster beds. By the 18 tens, these alternately were draped with three differently designed sets of curtains. One was blue and white, another green and white, and the third black and white.
"Whenever a dance was to be held, these beds were pushed to one end of the room and from behind them, the little girls of the house, 'Charlotte'... and Catherine would watch the dancers and imitate them, safely hidden by the bed curtains, and when too sleepy to longer keep awake, the children were put to bed in those same four-posters, where they slept, oblivious to the music and gayety about them."
Ironically the ballroom's most famous visitor came not to dance but to sleep. His 18 10 arrival caused a great stir not only in Belpre but throughout the surrounding communities, as well, for, sermons-wise, he was blazing a fiery path through the dark forests of the Ohio Valley in his quest to save souls. Into the room whose walls had resounded with the stirring notes of countess violins; where Margaret Blennerhassett and other lovely women had laughed, flirted, and moved their bodies gracefully to the dances of the day; where the neighborhood's leading men had swapped stories over punch bowls flowing with peach brandy; into this scene of past and future revelry strode the austere and zealous Reverend Francis Asbury, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Asbury's journal entry regarding his Maple Shade stay is terse: "On Wednesday [12 September 1810] 1 preached in a schoolhouse [in Belpre] on a bluff opposite Blannerhassett's island. Colonel Putnam, son of the renowned General of that name, invited me to the house of Waldo, grandson of the old chief: I had a very interesting interview with several revolutionary [War] officers, emigrants to this country, from good old Massachusetts."
Fortunately the mobile prelate numbered among his entourage one who penned a much fuller account of the historic visit. This was the Reverend James Quinn who related in Ins memoirs how
At three o'clock [on 12 September 18 10] he [the Reverend Asbury] preached in a school-house opposite Blennerhassett's Island; and truly it might be said of the sermon, as I once heard him say of Harnock's great law of consideration, 'It was a dagger, to the hilt at every stroke.'
After preaching we were kindly invited by Col. Putnam, son of Gen. Putnam, of the Revolution, to the house of his son, Major [Waldo] Putnam, where we were treated with every attention. Some six or eight of the principal men, with their ladies, came in to see and spend the evening with the Methodist bishop. Most of these were Revolutionary men. The conversation of the evening was quite of an interesting character, in which the Bishop took a lively part.
But, ever and anon, an important religious sentiment was thrown in, or a moral application made, to which the company bowed silent assent, their countenances, in the mean time, showing that the weight was felt. The evening closed with devotional services. The company retired, and we were conducted to our lodgings; and where should we find ourselves but in the splendid ball-room! 'Here,' said the Bishop, 'they were wont to worship the devil; but let us worship God.' I was informed that the decree was passed soon after, that no more balls were to be held there.
Maple Shade's impressive view of the Ohio River included the lower, or western, end of Belpre Island (soon to be re-christened by national notoriety as "Blennerhassett's Island"). By the late 1790s, it exerted a growing influence in the lives of Waldo and Charlotte Putnam. Maple Shade's most enduring footnote in history, in fact, stems from the Putnams' relationship with Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett. These wealthy, cultivated, and very aristocratic members of the Irish landed gentry arrived in the Belpre neighborhood around March 1798. It was then that they took up residence on the head of Belpre Island to begin building what soon would be regarded, for a brief but glorious period, the West's largest and most beautiful home. It reached completion in September 1800, about the same time as Maple Shade.
The Putnams not only became the Blennerhassetts' near neighbors; soon they were the foreign couple's closest companions. Even though seasoned farmer Waldo regularly advised novice Harman on his fanning operations, one suspects that the sealing bond between the two families lay in the friendship of the wives. Hildreth caught something of this, writing how "The genteel, easy manners, and beautiful person of Mrs. Putnam early attracted the attention of Madam Blennerhassett, and she became one of her most intimate associates, visiting each other with the familiarity of sisters."
This glowing picture of Mrs. Putnam is corroborated by her son Albigence Waldo Putnam. He remembered how he had "seen the 'rustling stiff brocade,' the 'wonderful stays and high heeled shoes,' which she wore when my father loved her for her beauty, praised her for her grace and wedded her for life. She had a fund of anecdotes and pleasant manner and ease of conversation to entertain company. I have seen the young - especially young ladies, crouched and kneeling around her, listening with intense interest to the tales she told them".
Despite the indisputable fact that she topped the local social pyramid, from a psychosocial point of view Mrs. Blennerhassett's position was not enviable. She was thousands of miles from her native hearth, separated by an ocean from family and friends. She also had to cope with setting up an extensive new household in an unfamiliar wilderness environment, a daunting prospect for any young woman gently bred in Europe. Thus, Margaret must have been utterly delighted to discover so close at hand a new friend as charmingly compatible as Charlotte Putnam.
Only one scene from their friendship has come down to us - again recorded by the Putnams' son Albigence - and it occurred at Maple Shade:
A short time prior to the flight of Hannon [sic] Blennerhassett ... his wife came on a visit to 'Maple Shade'. She had her sons, Dominique [sic] and Hannon [sic], with her. They came to spend the day, and the eldest boy, Dominique, brought a present for me, - a toy horse. Hannon had some little article for my younger brother, Israel. These were given to us soon after their arrival, in the presence of our relative mothers, and we were soon joyfully at play
Towards evening as Mrs. B. and her sons were about to return to their beautiful home on the island, Dominique took possession of the toy horse, saying 'It is mine and I mean to take it home'. I seized hold of it and between us it was broken in pieces. We had a little fight, - pulling of hair and fist-cuffs. This was my FIRST FIGHT.
Each of us told our own story, and I believe each great exaggerated, he saying 'he did not intend to take it home, that he did not say so, but was playing with it, when I jerked it from him, broke it and hit him!' My story was just about the same one rehearsed, or 'he hit me first.'
The mothers hushed it up and Mrs. Blennerhassett sent me some other plaything in lieu of the broken toy. Ibid, 28-29.
The Blennerhassetts fled down the Ohio in December 1806 at the height of the hue and cry over their involvement in Aaron Burr's "conspiracy". Her last neighborhood visit before embarking on her dangerous journey, was at her best friends' home. Mrs. Blennerhassett's keelboat moored at Maple Shade long enough for the Putnams to supply her with food and other necessities which the Wood County Militia - who had seized the Blennerhassett estate six days before - had denied her.
During the coming years, Waldo and his wife would prove their loyalty more than once to the discredited and increasing impoverished Blennerhassetts. In 1818, Waldo provided one of his most valuable services by acting as guardian to Harman's and Margaret's third son, Harman, Jr., when that ill-fated youth pursued what would prove to be a short academic career at Ohio University.
But the Putnams would not be helping their distant friends much longer. Charlotte died during 1822's terrible "sickly season," on 18 September. When told of his wife's death, Waldo said nothing and, pulling the sheet over his face, held his head in his hands groaning. Three days later he followed her to the grave. Even though Mrs. Putnam was only 49 and her husband but six years older, their world - that of the eighteenth century frontier - was dying with them. The area's social life had never recovered from the departure of the Blennerhassetts. Moreover, a new way of thinking, a more dour morality which was the forerunner of Victorian ethics, was creeping in to replace the old pioneer spirit of spontaneous gaiety. Bishop Asbury's visit had indeed foreshadowed changing times.
With the passing of Waldo and Charlotte, a slow, almost imperceptible, decline set in for Maple Shade and its family. While the members of each succeeding generation lived as prosperously as their neighbors, (even though Maple Shade's acres gradually shrank) none of Waldo Putnam's descendants ever matched the almost luxurious style which he and his wife had enjoyed toward the end of their lives.
Following the couple's sudden deaths, the question arose of whether or not Maple Shade should be sold as part of settling their estate. It was the united wish of his siblings, however, that William Pitt Putnam purchase the property as his home "to save it from passing into the hands of strangers". Purchase it he did, and after his 1871 death it passed to his eldest son, Israel Waldo. Such was the solidarity of inheritance which kept the homestead in Putnam hands for so long. Even more remarkably, it protected the family relics from being scattered among the various branches of descendants.
Undoubtedly, it was Israel Waldo's reverential attitude toward the heirlooms - which included such priceless items as General Israel Putnam's French and Indian War powder horn, oil paintings, and Blennerhassett manuscripts and furniture - that kept them identified and intact as a collection. In the 1930s, a journalist interviewing his daughter learned that it largely was through Israel Waldo's
The same newspaper article relates an interesting example of Israel Waldo's wisdom. Among Maple Shade's proudest possessions in the late nineteenth century was a beautiful mahogany settee with a serpentine back. Once it had belonged to the Blennerhassetts. "The historic settee might easily have been ruined and lost ere this had not the Putnam sentiment saved it. Mrs. Houser related that two aunts, living far apart, wrote to her father years ago requesting him to cut that piece of furniture in two, sending each a half Her father refused to do so...."
A crisis appeared in 1901 when, at Israel Waldo's death, the male Putnam line in Belpre failed. The name had, over the years, to use an Appalachian saying, become "daughtered out". Israel Waldo's only son, William Pitt, had chosen to make his home in Chicago. What saved Maple Shade from the auction block and its collection of treasures from being broken up at this critical juncture, was the resolution of Israel Waldo's remaining child, Mary Putnam (Mrs. James H.) Houser. She bravely decided to give up her home in Iowa and return with her husband and two young sons, James Hubert and Wendell Dana, to the family farm. This the Housers did in 1909.
Mary's husband died eleven years later. Following her death in 1952 at 91, the torch of preservation descended to her reclusive bachelor son, Dana. Like his mother, he was devoted to Maple Shade and, until too weakened by ill health and old age, farmed it assiduously.
Before this last resident family member passed from the scene, however, he came to what must have been a sad but unavoidable decision. On 13 October 1960, Dana sold the 240-acre Maple Shade property to Shell Chemical Company. The agreement allowed him to retain "leasehold rights to the premises until his death or until he ceases personally to live on the premises, whichever shall first occur". Soon surrounded on three sides by a sprawling industrial plant, Dana was left with his house, some outbuildings, and thirty acres to till.
In December 1980, when Dana Houser left his ancestral acres for the last time to enter a nursing home - he was to die on 25 October 1981 - events moved swiftly leaving Maple Shade's fate hanging precariously in the balance. Shell found itself in a bind. While the company greatly needed the house site for expansion, its officials did not want to destroy what was acknowledged as one of the Ohio Valley's few surviving eighteenth-century wooden structures which, to boot, exhibited an excellent state of preservation. It was, in fact, a preservationist's dream, because Israel Waldo Putnam and his Houser successors thankfully had done little to modernize the building. They could well have afforded to do so, but preferred to live in the old style.
The historical agencies to which Maple Shade was offered as a gift - the Ohio Historical Society, the Washington County (Ohio) Historical Society, and Belpre (Ohio) Historical Society - all said no. The problems of finding and then purchasing a suitable replacement location for the structure, to be followed by the cost of moving it, were daunting propositions.
Thereupon, Shell changed direction and crossed the Ohio. It offered the house to the Blennerhassett
Historical Park Commission (predecessor to Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park) which, in 1983, agreed
to give Maple Shade a new
home on Blennerhassett Island. Even though it possessed 
an
ideal site for Maple Shade, the commission had no more money to move the house than did its Ohio sister
organizations. Shell then came to rescue by agreeing to finance the enormous expense $70,000 - of moving the
house. This action ranks as one of the most outstanding examples, in the Ohio Valley, of private
industry supporting historic preservation.
On 29 December 1986, a new chapter opened in Maple Shade's long history. From heights occupied for 186 years,
it was trucked down to the water's edge and then barged upriver to Blennerhassett Island. There the venerable
old lady 
was
carefully fitted onto a new brick foundation which stood on a three
foot-high artificial rise, 187 yards west of the reconstructed Blennerhassett mansion. In 1999, the
Blennerhassett Historical Foundation, as one of its major projects, committed itself to the future restoration
of Maple Shade.
Once the Putnams extended help to the Blennerhassetts when they most needed it. Now, nearly two centuries later, the favor is being returned.
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