Biographies
Harold C. Putnam
Edwin L. Babbitt
Elton W. Davis
Harold C. Putnam
Contributor: Photograph Collection
Author: Improvement of the Allegheny River
and Flood Control
Harold C. Putnam was born in Russell, PA, on October 8, 1893, in a small frame house at the foot of East Street, near the Conewango Creek, a stretch of water on which he and his brother later spent many pleasurable hours in a variety of boats, navigating all the way to Frewsburg, N.Y. and back. The house in which he was born still stands, on the same block with the old Chase family homestead where the Putnam boys summered with their parents, and with their grandparents, Charles and Emeline Briggs Chase.
Read the autobiography of Harold Putnam's Grandfather, Charles.
Mr. Putnam was the son of Homer M. Putnam and Belle Aline Chase, daughter of Charles. His grandparents were all members of pioneer families in Pine Grove Township, and his father was descended from Jesse Putnam, the first of his family in Warren County, who came in 1830 to a part of Pine Grove, which later became Farmington Township. The area in which the family settled, Thompson Hill, was for many years known as Putnamville.
Mr. Putnam attended Warren schools, graduating in 1913 from Warren High School, and went on to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Bachelor’s degree in 1917 and a Master’s in Latin the following year. His great interest in the classics, especially Roman private life and architecture, was a lifetime pursuit.
After service with the U.S. Army following graduation, he taught at Warren High, beginning in the late fall of 1918, and the following year he spent a semester as teacher of mathematics. Resigning his teaching position at the end of the spring 1919 term, he joined the New Process Company (now Blair Corp.) in Warren as head of the accounting department. He became the treasurer of the company upon incorporation in 1924 and later secretary as well, positions he held until retirement in 1959. During his long life in Warren he was active in many civic and fraternal organizations, serving many of them as an officer or director. Married in 1935 to Margaret E. Gibson of Warren, he raised two children, Chase and Anne.
Not the least of Mr. Putnam’s interests over the years was the Warren County Historical Society. He devoted uncountable hours to the society, first as an officer and later as a director, but always as a gatherer of local and area history. He amassed a collection of photographs and memorabilia of his own; and he conveyed his interest to many others, always seeking to add more to what was known about our county. His love for history had an early beginning, for he always said that he spent many happy hours on his grandfathers’ laps, listening to tales of the early days, particularly of rafting trips down the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers. Both grandfathers were raftsmen, and his grandfather Chase was, for much of his working life, a pilot on the rafts.
Most of the historical photographs housed at the Warren Public Library were gathered by Mr. Putnam and others during the 1940’s and 50’s for use as a reference collection. The majority of them were taken by professional photographers. The earliest views date to about 1860 and they record the growth of the town, its people and its buildings. Over the years many pictures have been added to the collection, which documents activity in other county communities as well.
Because of his particular interest in river history Mr. Putnam assembled a large personal collection of books, documents and photographs relating to the Allegheny and other eastern inland rivers, with emphasis, of course, on Warren’s role as an active river town. The Warren County Historical Society holds this collection.
Edwin L. Babbitt
Author of the Allegheny Pilot
Edwin L. Babbitt was born in 1817 in New England. He was one of the six children of Amos Lemuel Babbitt (b. April 26, 1790, New Milford, CT—d.1855, Panama, N.Y.) and Millicent S. Olmstead Babbitt (b. 1794, d. 1846).
Little is known about Mr. Babbitt other than that provided from family records. Edwin L. was a large man and wore a black beard. He was very good-humored and well liked, always cheerful no matter what happened. He played the cornet very well and was almost always a member of some cornet band.
Babbitt was a restless, energetic man, full of inventive ideas that often brought him financial loss. He was a lumberman primarily and lived in the early 1850’s on a houseboat on the Allegheny River. It was here he was living with his second wife Mary Gleason Babbitt and his little daughter Auroline (Arlie: born 1846--died 1931, by his first wife, Elizabeth Clark of Randolph, NY) that he noticed the need of a river guide for the rafters and set out to make one. He did considerable research and in 1854 compiled his charts and published them in 1855 in a lithographed volume called the Allegheny Pilot. It was a great help to the lumbermen and was known as the Lumberman’s Bible by some of them. It was not, however, a financial success. A copy of it is a rare item today. In the oil boom days, when oil was shipped down the river on barges, a man named Gillilan resurrected it, pirated the sketches and much of the text and published it for the oil shippers.
Edwin L. started a broom factory on Kinzua Creek at White Gravel. It was not a success. When oil came he got in the game and built a small refinery across from Tidioute. It was a 15-barrel still. He put the oil into wooden barrels and shipped it to New Jersey for sale overseas. He wasn’t satisfied with the price offered and waited. The staves of the barrels broke on the docks in Jersey City and the oil was lost. In 1870 he had a sawmill at Jackson’s Crossing about three miles below Warren. Minnie, his daughter, used to skate to Warren to school in the winter. By 1880 he was in Grand Valley, PA, where he had a sawmill and an oil lease. He seemed to prosper there. He built a large white house. He and his wife Mary are interred in Youngsville, Warren Co., PA.
Biographical information provided by Rex Babbitt of Miami, Florida in 1947.
Elton Whitney Davis
Artist: Historic paintings and drawings
Warren native and accomplished multimedia artist and illustrator Elton Whitney Davis demonstrated a talent for art at an early age as evidenced by his numerous drawings and cartoons contained in the earliest editions of Warren High School’s Dragon annual yearbook. Mr. Davis helped write and produce silent films for Vitagraph Company of America and later studied at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Arts (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art). He subsequently studied lithography and engraving in Cleveland, Ohio, and portraiture and illustration in New York City. Returning to Warren, he produced commercial artwork for regional companies and trade publications as well as portraits. Ultimately he moved to Buffalo, New York where he was the art director for an advertising agency and continued to paint portraits until his death in Warren on March 16, 1971.
Mr. Davis was renowned locally for his murals “At the Wharf”,
a 32-foot mural depicting the Allegheny River waterfront at Warren, PA, in 1852, located in Warren’s Conewango Club Oak Room, and an English Pastoral mural in the former A. J. Hazeltine home (later the Stone Museum) as well as his copy of the original painting of Chief Cornplanter and, the recreation of William A. Greaves’s “Rockwell Wilcox” painting. His larger body of works consists of commercial art, cartoons, portraits, paintings and sketches covering a range of subjects including local historic lore and events, architecture and maps.
His commercial works include an original poster for the Piso Company of Warren, PA, covers for the Office Economist, a monthly publication of the Art Metal Construction Company in Jamestown, NY, artwork for the Pennzoil Company in Oil City, PA, and monthly syndicated advertising cartoons for a Bradford, PA clothing company. During this same period he did a considerable amount of freelance artwork and ultimately a number of portraits for families in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
His “Map of Warren County Pennsylvania Scenic and Historic Sites and Other Points of Interest” (1957), was “created to honor the citizens of Warren County—past, present and future.” His “Indian Map of Upper Allegheny” (1957, color, 16 “ x 22”), presents a detailed view of notable locales along the river’s course labeled in the Seneca language. His contributions to the Warren Almanac (1938-1944) provide a sensitive and sometimes humorous artistic rendering of local historical subjects. He also created the title design and drawing used on every issue of the Stepping Stones, the magazine of the Warren County Historical Society. Taken together his work represents a valuable historical research tool as well as an esthetic record of his origins and his times and in themselves they represent an important link in the historical record of Warren County.
Stepping Stones, Warren Pa: Warren County Historical Society. Vol. 27, No. 2 (May 1983): 987-988.