Thanks to Thomas MacEntee, a fellow blogger, for his comment on my earlier blog post about my Putman/Putnam lines. My Putman line came over from England where it was Putnam and according to several who have researched the earlier ancestors was Puttenham in the 1400s. There is a book at Google Books(see below) which tells a bit about the name.
The passage speculates that Puttenham was from the Flemish word putte which means "a well" and ham of course meaning home. This would have it meaning a settlement by a well. Strangely enough in Bedford Co. TN where my Putmans settled in the early 1800s there is an area named Putman Well which was in earlier times also called Putnam Well. Talk about redundancy
As Thomas mentioned the "flip-flopping" of spellings causes us to have to research both names or risk missing out on something. That's also true of my Pitman/Pittman/Pitmon line which has a variety of spellings and which I've also seen confused with Putman/Putnam. Don't get me started on the frustration of researching my maiden name of Cooke or my mother's maternal grandmother who was a Hale. Another blog post perhaps.. :-)
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