After disposing of property to his brother David, and receiving therefor the goodly sum of L1,900, Israel Putnam joined with his brother-in-law, Joseph Pope, in the purchase of more than five hundred acres of land from Governor Belcher, for which they agreed to pay at the rate of five pounds per acre.

They paid for it partly in "bills of credit on the Province of Massachusetts," and gave a mortgage for the remainder.

And so fertile was this wild land, and so thrifty was the young pioneer farmer Israel Putnam, that within little more than two years he had liquidated the mortgage and received a quit-claim deed from the Governor, as well as purchased his brother-in-law's portion of the tract they had bought together.
The two pioneers may have made a special trip to the Connecticut tract before deciding to purchase; for it was not in the nature of them to "buy a pig in a poke," as it were.

And such a journey of nearly a hundred miles, mainly through a wilderness, was no child's task in those days.

In after-years General Israel Putnam made many a longer journey, through wilds swarming with hostile Indians, too, and thought nothing of it; but this was the first of any account that he took very far away from home.
What the young wife thought when the enthusiastic adventurer came back with his story was never recorded.