PRUCIUS PUTNAM, farmer, Sec. 34; P. O. Dodge's Corners; was born Sept. 24, 1813, in Andover, Vt.; his early life was spent as a farmer in the Green Mountain State; in the fall of 1836, in company with nine others from Andover, he left for the wilds of Wisconsin; John Dodge, the Haseltine brothers and himself left Chicago with a team, reaching Vernon Nov. 1, 1836; there were the four first actual settlers of the town, and each made a claim on Secs. 27 and 34; they also built the first white man's house that fall, which stood, 15x16 feet in size, a few rods south of the present schoolhouse at Dodge's Corners; their provisions that fall were brought from Chicago, pork at $28 per barrel, and flour at $10; they did some frontier work here, and on the 9th of January, 1838, Dodge and Putnam left for Chicago, and, on their return in the spring, each settled upon his own claim; they were soon joined by others whose names figure in the history of Vernon. On the 1st of January, 1838, Mr. Putnam married Miss Emmeline R., daughter of Col. Orien Haseltine, it being the first wedding in Town of Vernon, though Curtis W. Haseltine married Merial, daughter of John Thomas, in the evening of the same day. Mr. P. raised buckwheat and turnips for his first crop, corn, wheat and oats failing on account of the unprecedented cold season of 1838; he now has 365 acres, with buildings in striking contrast to those existing when Indians were his neighbor, and Indian trails his roads. A staunch Republican, he has been in various town offices; he also had the honor to open the first store in his town, in 1846. There are four living children by this historic marriage--P.W., B. B., W. T. and L. L. Mr. Putnam relates that when the four were en route for Vernon, in October, 1836, they did not see a house from fifteen miles north of Chicago, to Burlington, Wis., where a settler, named Smith, had a shaker-roofed shanty built; in January, while he and Dodge were returning to Chicago, they lunched at Levi Godfrey's who was then the only man at what is now Rochester, Wis.; cold biscuit, washed down with colder water, then a fifteen-mile tramp to Ives' Grove, through a blinding snow-storm, Mr. P. suffering untold misery from an attack of rheumatism, and being barely able to follow the trail; reaching the double log house of ---Call, they found a sick family, with only a girl able to get supper for them, and to wait on the sick; the supper consisted of a kettle of hot mush, with milk; this was qui