The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Putnam, Frederick Ward

PUTNAM, pŭt'nạm, Frederick Ward, American archæologist and ethnologist: b. Salem, Mass., 16 April 1839; d. 1915. He became curator at Essex Institute in Salem in 1856, was graduated from Harvard in 1862 and in 1864 became director of the Essex Institute Museum. In 1867 he was appointed superintendent of the East Indian Marine Society's Museum at Salem and in 1875 was appointed civilian assistant on the United States surveys west of the 100th meridian, his duties being to make investigations and reports of the archæological and ethnological material collected. In 1876-78 he was in charge of the Agassiz collection of fishes at the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy and in 1886 was appointed professor of American archæology and ethnology at Harvard. He was chief of the department of ethnology at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. He is author of numerous pamphlets on scientific subjects, was one of the founders and editors of the American Naturalist, and has edited many volumes of ‘Annual Reports of the Trustees of the Peabody Museum of Archæology and Ethnology’ and ‘Proceedings of the Essex Institute.’