I first met Dick Putnam four decades ago. We had recently moved to Wilton and heard that a stop at Putnam’s Store was a requirement. In fact, it was a necessity.
We quickly learned a stop at Putnam’s satisfied most needs for those living in Wilton, while Dick kept tabs on the pulse of the community. This meant our introduction to life in Wilton was seamless, having been filled in on where we could find anything on our list, including who to contact when we needed a service and how to get involved with town activities when that time came.
The bonus was that we didn’t have to go far afield for special treats for our sons, shirts for my husband, reading material for me, rented tuxes and formal dresses or dry cleaning and package-delivery services. The large front display case in the store at that time was filled with an immense variety of penny candy. There was a dressing room, a huge magazine and newspaper rack and a front counter that had everything required to pack, weigh and send a parcel or hand over your clothes to be cleaned.
During the cold months, people would gather at the rear of the store around the wood stove discussing town issues or plans with Dick.
Even though Dick eventually sold his store, he didn’t merely drop out and retire home to Milford. He continued to be more involved in Wilton life and activities than many who live in town.
I recently ran into him on Main Street while he was helping with the Lions Club booth during Summer Fest and spoke with him about two of the other committees he serves on, the Wilton Economic Development Committee and the Wilton Alliance.
Although his lodgings may be elsewhere, it’s obvious his heart is invested in Wilton. To be fair, he graduated from Wilton High School and his family ran Putnam’s since 1934 and had roots in town dating back to the early 18th century.
In 2005, Dick’s allegiance to Wilton was recognized as he was designated “Mr. June” along with his son, Ben, in the Men of Wilton fundraising calendar. Each month, the calendar not only had holidays and special days noted, it also recognized the important days in Wilton’s history.
June in Wilton is filled with days of great significance to the community, and it was appropriate that Dick represented the month in which the town was originally petitioned for, settled and incorporated as well as other noteworthy steps in town history. Specifically:
— 6/19/1735 First petition for settlement of Wilton issued.
— 6/26/1744 Petition for “protection against the Indians” issued to Governor Wentworth.
— 6/18/1761 Petition for incorporation of Wilton sent to Governor Wentworth.
— 6/25/1762 Wilton officially incorporated.
— 6/27/1762 First Town Meeting held in Wilton.
— 6/16/1814 Bales and Holt Cotton and Woolen Factory Incorporated.
— 6/13/1827 Charter for Mason’s Clinton Lodge 52 granted.
— 6/23/1829 Wilton Manufacturing Co. incorporated.
— 6/10/1852 2nd Congregational Church dedicated in East Wilton.
— 6/16/1898 Dedication of Masonic Lodge donated by David A Gregg.
— 6/5/1917 First registration for draft in Wilton.
— 6/24/1998 Wilton accepted as a NH Main Street community – WMSA founded.
(If you are curious, you may see the full Men of Wilton calendar pages on display in the Town Hall lobby.)
Dick’s family ties to Wilton date back almost as far as the first item in this list, 1739. His many-times-great-grandfather, Nathaniel Putnam, received a land grant in what is now both Wilton and Lyndeborough, known then only as Number Two. Nathaniel’s sons, Jacob and Ephraim Putnam, moved to Number Two in 1739 and established two of the first four homesteads in the town for their wives and children.
Ephraim’s cabin still stands near where it was originally erected near Vale End Cemetery. It was moved to its present location on private land around 1900. When no longer a home, the building became a “hatter shop” and even a pottery studio, even though it now is only a reminder of Wilton’s early history, a history that ties Dick to Wilton no matter what his address may be.
After graduating from UNH and completing his service with the Air Force in 1975, Dick and his wife moved to a family home in Milford, but returned to Wilton to work at the store.
While speaking about this, I asked Dick what his dreams had then been for Putnam’s. His family had seen Route 101 bypass Wilton in 1951, which was a dramatic change for the town with the bulk of traffic no longer there to support the town businesses, so his ready reply was, “I wanted to find a way to keep the business going. My only plan was to serve the needs of the community. This was sometimes done by morphing Putnam’s into something it hadn’t been a few years before, often by taking up the slack when other businesses were no longer around.”
His purchase of the former Maude Adams Shop next door and expanding Putnam’s to twice its size in 1985 is an illustration of just this point. It made a space for women’s wear to add to the men’s apparel the store already sold. He continued, “Putnam’s was just a cog in the wheel of Wilton change. When Harwood’s decided to no longer sell newspapers, I took that over. I added magazines and even had a mail-order business for awhile when we found we could sell goatskin garden gloves manufactured in Michigan. Because of this enterprise, I was able to get UPS to agree to allow the store to become a UPS shipping point, which was another way we could service the community. Putnam’s morphed into what it was in small increments that made sense each step of the way.”
Dick joined the Wilton Lions Club in 1977 and with John Hutchinson, Carl Anderson and George Liamos, started the Wilton Business Association, also in the late 1970s. Its purpose was to promote local businesses. He was also one of the first to join the original Wilton Art and Film Festival Committee in the 1980s. This was the first time he and I served on the same committee and we did so for the entire 10 years of WAAF’s existence.
By the mid-1990s, it was clear the town needed another boost. That was when he and Dick Rockwood went to a meeting in Concord whose purpose was to introduce the concept of the National Main Street Program to New Hampshire. They said, “Let’s try this for Wilton” and a planning group was started to collect information for the application proposal.
This was the second time I worked with Dick on a committee. This time, I discovered his depth of knowledge about Wilton history and his passionate belief in the town, as well as his extensive historic photographic and document collection that was donated to his family by Florence Rideout, for whom Wilton Elementary School was named.
With the arrival of WAAF, Putnam’s Store became an essential spot for gathering and dispersing all organizational information, with Dick acting as a living bulletin board for this group. Putnam’s again became central to all planning and information dispersal for the Wilton Main Street group as it formed and as it continued its work, until an office space was donated by Chuck Crawford when he purchased the Wilton Falls Building. Yet the store remained a meeting spot for anyone interested in Wilton’s future until Dick formally took down the Putnam’s sign a few years ago.
Before we left our empty coffee and tea cups on a table at Share, I asked him what his hopes now were for Wilton. He replied, “I have high hopes the community on Main Street will remain viable with the merchants working together. In a broader sense I believe the concept of ‘community’ is so important. If we don’t have a functioning community, you can’t take things to a higher level, that of a having the democracy you care about.”