Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Putnam, James Osborne

PUTNAM, James Osborne, lawyer, b. in Attica, N. Y., 4 July, 1818. His father, Harvey (1793-1855), was a representative in congress in 1838-'9 and 1847-'51, having been chosen as a Whig. The son studied at Hamilton college and then at Yale, where he was graduated in 1839. He read law in his father's office, was admitted as a practitioner in 1842, and the same year began practice in Buffalo. In 1851-'3 he was postmaster there. In 1853 he was elected to the state senate, where he was the author of the bill, that became a law in 1855, requiring the title of church real property to be vested in trustees. In 1857 he was the unsuccessful nominee of the American party for secretary of state. He was chosen a presidential elector on the Republican ticket in 1860, and appointed U. S. consul at Havre, France, in 1861. In 1880 he became U. S. minister to Belgium, and while he was filling this mission he was appointed by the U. S. government a delegate to the International industrial property congress in Paris in 1881. He has published “Orations, Speeches, and Miscellanies” (Buffalo, 1880).