Israel Putnam established his first home in the Colony of Connecticut on adjacent land he bought in 1739 from Governor Belcher, comprising 514 ½ acres at £5.0.0 per acre, and in 1740 he came there from Salem Village, Massachusetts, with his wife and first child, Israel Putnam, who later went with General Rufus Putnam to Ohio. In 1742, the famous wolf was run to earth there. Putnam began his military career in 1755 at the Battle of Lake George and in August was made 2nd Lieutenant; in 1756 he served as a Ranger with Captain Rogers; in 1758 he was with Lord Howe when Howe was killed at Lake George and in August became a prisoner in Quebec; in 1759, as Lieutenant Colonel, he was at the capture of Ticonderoga and Montreal; in 1762 he was in Cuba and at Detroit in 1764. From all these absences he returned there to the joys of home, where his children grew up and where his devoted wife Hannah Pope Putnam, the mother of all his children, died in 1765. In 1767, after his second marriage, Putnam moved to his new home, the General Wolfe Tavern near Brooklyn Green, because the number of his visitors was too great for a private house, but the earlier home remained the scene of many joyous reunions of old comrades after the Indian and Colonial Wars and before the Revolutionary Period.