There might not be much there now but there used to be a village there — and a post office!

This is one of those hamlets named after its founder — Jesse Putnam.

A soldier of the American Revolution in a New Hampshire company, a 79-year old Jesse settled what is now Farmington Township with his sons Daniel and Edson in 1830, according to Schenck’s History of Warren County.

An additional source says they arrived here the year prior via Boston and New York after leaving Brattleboro, Vermont.

Times Observer photos by Josh Cotton The location of the former Putnamville post office is marked today in the front yard of what presumably was one of the area’s schoolhouses.

William Thompson — the namesake for Thompson Hill — arrived in the area a couple years later in the fall of 1832.

Early residents of Putnamville had to walk to the current location of Eisenhower for school before a log school was built in the immediate area. A post office was established in 1896 in the home of Elmer Thompson, a descendant of Putnam “and consisted of a handmade bank of sixty boxes and a slotted service window,” according to an article by local historian Ernest Miller.

When free rural delivery was implemented at the turn of the 20th century, post offices such as this weren’t needed and the post office at Putnamville closed for good in 1903.

Burial records indicate that Jesse Putnam died in 1837 and is buried at the Thompson Hill Cemetery. Daniel was buried there a decade later.

One of Daniel’s sons, Sidney, moved to Lyon County, Kansas and was a pioneer there, living for 51 years on the same farm. Daniel’s other two sons, Perry and Theodore — are both buried in Warren County. Little is known about Theodore but Perry moved to Eldred Township in 1851 and then back to Farmington Twp. in 1865, per Schenck, and remained on the same farm for at least 20 years.