In these efforts of the officers to secure western lands, Putnam was the leader. Putnam had been well taught in the school of experience. After his father’s death, he had gone, at the age of nine, to live with his stepfather, who made him work hard and would not permit him to go to school. “For six years,” Putnam said, “I was made a ridecule of, and otherwise abused for my attention to books, and attempting to write and learn Arethmatic.” At the age of 16 he was bound as apprentice to a millwright. Three years later he decided to escape from the severity of his master and seek adventure by joining the English army in the French and Indian War. He returned home from his second enlistment in disgust, because he had been made to work in the mills when he wanted to fight the French and Indians. After working seven years as a millwright, he turned to farming and surveying. Soon after the outbreak of the Revolution he was appointed military engineer. Later in the war he constructed the fortifications at West Point and suggested that place for a military school. He retired from the army a brigadier general and returned to farming and surveying. Putnam was appointed by Congress surveyor on the seven ranges of townships provided for by the Land Ordinance of 1785; but he resigned to survey lands in Maine for his own state and recommended Brigadier General Benjamin Tupper for the position in Ohio. Tupper was so closely associated with Putnam in western plans that the two men have been called twin brothers. It has been suggested that the two men deliberately investigated land available for purchase in two different regions to compare their advantages. Tupper was stopped at Pittsburgh by Indian trouble, but he heard favorable reports of the Ohio country, which made him enthusiastic for settlement. He hurried eastward and arrived at Rutland on January 9, 1786. Before the blazing fireplace in Putnam’s home the two men talked all night about their dream of settlement in the West. When the morning light gleamed through the windows of the kitchen, the ineffectual hopes of the army officers had been forged into a practical plan of action by the enthusiasm of Putnam and Tupper. On January 25, 1786, Massachusetts newspapers published an invitation to officers and others interested in western settlement to meet in their respective counties and appoint delegates to convene at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston to form an organization for the purpose. Although this call was sent out three years after the Newburgh Petition, the prompt response of the officers showed that there had been no decline in interest. The Ohio Company of Associates resulted from this meeting.