Lieutenant Putnam of the Twentieth Massachusetts, who was so young that he was called the "boy soldier," was mortally wounded in the battle, was carried to Poolesville, where he died the next day. He came of noble blood. His father was descended from the ancestor of old General Putnam, who fought the French and Indians on the shores of Lake Champlain, who did not stop to unyoke his oxen in the field, when he heard of the affair at Lexington, and hastened to meet the enemy. Rev. James Freeman Clarke, at his funeral said:-- "His mother's family has given to us statesmen, sages, patriots, poets, scholars, orators, economists, philanthropists, and now gives us also a hero and a martyr. His great grandfather, Judge Lowell, inserted in the Bill of Rights, prefixed to the Constitution of this State, the clause declaring that 'all men are born free and equal,' for the purpose, as he avowed at the time, of abolishing slavery in Massachusetts, and he was appointed by Washington, federal judge of the district. "His grandfather was minister of this church, [West Church, Boston,] honored and loved as few men have been, for more than half a century. "Born in Boston in 1840, he was educated in Europe, where he went when eleven years old, and where in France, Germany, and Italy he showed that he possessed the ancestral faculty of mastering easily all languages, and where he faithfully studied classic and Christian antiquity and art. Under the best and most loving guidance, he read with joy the vivid descriptions of Virgil, while looking down from the hill of Posilippo, on the headland of Misenum, and the ruins of Cumæ. He studied with diligence the remains of Etruscan art, of which, perhaps, no American scholar, though he was so young, knew more. "Thus accomplished, he returned to his native land, but, modest and earnest, he made no display of his acquisitions, and very few knew that he had acquired anything. When the war broke out, his conscience and heart urged him to go to the service of his country. His strong sense of duty overcame the reluctance of his parents, and they consented. A presentiment that he should not return alive was very strong in his mind and theirs, but he gave himself cheerfully, and said, in entire strength of his purpose, that 'to die would be easy in such a cause.' In the full conviction of immortality he added, 'What is death, mother? it is nothing but a step in our life.'