Caroline F. Putnam

Caroline F. Putnam (July 29, 1826 – January 14, 1917) was an American abolitionist and educator from Massachusetts, devoted herself in abolitionist movement and opened the Holley School for freed slaves.

Putnam graduated from Oberlin College after finishing four years of study and devoted herself in abolitionist movement. In the early 1860s, Putnam emphasized on aid for the freed slaves. Later, she moved to Lottsburg, Virginia, to open the Holley School for freed slaves. She devoted her life in educating and delivering ideas of freedom to black children from labor families.

Early life Putnam was born in 1826 in Massachusetts to a Unitarian physician, who died when she was a small child, and his wife Eliza Putnam.

Education Putnam enrolled at Oberlin College in 1848, where she met Sallie Holley. Like Holley, who was to become her lifelong companion, Putnam was out of step with Oberlin on evangelical doctrine, eventually embracing Unitarianism. Also at odds with the college's conservative evangelical abolitionism, she followed Holley into the more radical Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement. Both women spent their lives in greater female activism and more radical social reform than were endorsed by Oberlin faculty.

When Holley graduated in 1851, Putnam left Oberlin without completing her studies. For the next decade she worked for the abolition of slavery, largely in the shadow of Holley, who became a noted abolitionist lecturer. Putnam traveled with Holley, wrote to newspapers about Holley's speaking engagements, and called door-to-door in villages across the North to explain the tenets of Garrisonianism, though she disliked the rootlessness of constant travel and felt that she lacked the tenacity and emotional resilience required by the work.

Career In the early 1860s, Putnam and her lifelong companion Holley shifted their attention from abolition to aid for the freed slaves. In 1868, Putnam stepped from Holley's shadow, establishing new careers for both of them. Putnam moved to Lottsburg, Virginia, to open a school for freed slaves. She taught, looked after administrative tasks, pioneered innovative means of gaining financial support, and earned southern white acceptance without yielding on racial issues. Holley taught alongside Putnam after 1870 but was never reconciled to the isolation of rural Virginia, so she spent months at a time traveling in the North. After Putnam's retirement she encouraged the emergence of the NAACP and also worked for temperance, world peace, and the protection of animals.

The Holley Graded School was notable for emphasizing a political curriculum and stressed the historical struggle for African-Americans and criticized industrial education unmercifully. As a prolific correspondent, Putnam never wrote for publication.

Retired life Putnam retired in 1903, after thirty-five years of schoolwork, but she remained in Lottsburg, superintending the school and assisting in the community until her death in 1917. Among the northern white women who assisted in establishing southern African-American education in the 1860s, only Laura M. Towne taught longer; none remained longer in the South. Putnam is interred in Lottsburg, near the school founded.