Although generally known as a Connecticut man he was born at Salem, Mass., 1718, and in 1739, at the age of twenty-one, removed to Pomfret, Conn., and later to Brooklyn in the same state, with which latter place his name is afterwards associated. Here as a farmer and tavern keeper he passed the remainder of his life except that considerable part which was given to the active military service of his country. The change from the life of a successful soldier to these commonplace pursuits would seem to many to be near akin to a fall, but Putnam’s practical good sense found no difficulty in it. When he returned from the army he resumed his farming, tavern business and beer brewing, and seems to have had no false shame at either of the humbler avocations. Like a wise and self-contained man he did the work nearest to his hand and found honor in it whatever it might be. On the other hand, however, it is no small credit to the beer brewing fraternity to have had such a man in their ranks, even were it in a more limited and incidental way than was actually the case. The tavern sign of General Israel Putnam, which hung before his door in Brooklyn, (Conn.,) in the year 1768 and later, is now preserved in the rooms of the Historical Society at Hartford, (Conn.,) and an illustration representing it will be found on the opposite page. The sign is made of yellow pine, painted alike on both sides. The device is a full length portrait of General Wolfe, dressed in scarlet uniform. The portrait of the young hero is quite correct. The sign was presented to the Historical Society by Rufus S. Mathewson of Woodstock. Aside from the early public breweries there were doubtless many in which beer was made for family consumption. “Home brewed” was common in the native homes of most of the colonists, and there is no reason to suppose that they voluntarily changed their accustomed manner of living and dispensed with a wholesome drink to which they had been used from infancy. In leaving this branch of the subject it should be noted that the beer of the earliest periods, like the ale of England before the seventeenth century, was usually made without hops, and it is impossible to say when these were first employed, although the experiment was certainly of no very modern date. It was probably the greatest improvement ever made in the production of beer, since it gives a light, clear, and elegant product very different from anything that was produced on the other plan. The modern demand was for a drink that should be agreeable, refreshing and moderately stimulating, and it is now abundantly recognized that the fermented decoction of malted barley, clarified and preserved by the hops, best fulfills this requirement. [Illustration: Gen^l WOLFE. SIGN OF GENERAL PUTNAM’S TAVERN IN BROOKLYN, CONN. _The original is now in the Rooms of the Historical Society, at Hartford. Conn._]