Gideon was born on April 17, 1763 in Sutton, Massachussets, United States, the son of Stephen and Mary (Gibbs) Putnam and the descendant of John Putnam, an emigrant from Buckinghamshire, England, to Salem, Massachussets. He was one of twelve children.
There is no information about his education.
Gideon Putnam and his wife Doana Risley pioneered for a time on the Vermont frontier, building their cabin on land that later became the site of Middlebury College, then removed to Rutland, and later to Bemis Flats.
They settled at the site of Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1789. He at once began making staves and shingles which he rafted down the Hudson River to the city of New York, where much building was in progress after the Revolutionary War. Leasing 300 acres of land, he built a sawmill, the product of which soon paid for the land. The medicinal value of the springs, where he settled, had been known to the Indians and to the earliest white explorers, and a few sporadic attempts had been made to capitalize that value, but he was the first white settler to grasp the possibilities of the springs as a permanent attraction to visitors and to plan accordingly.
In 1802 he began building a section, seventy feet long, of a great hotel to be known as Union Hall and, years later, as the Grand Union Hotel. He then laid out a village, tubed several of the springs, and began the erection of Congress Hall.
While overseeing the construction of the future Congress Hall, Putnam fell off the scaffolding and broke some ribs. On December 1, 1812, at the age of 49, he died of a lung disease complication and pneumonia.
At Hartford, Connecticut, Putnam was married to Doana Risley, the daughter of Benjamin Risley. Their son Lewis was the first white child born in Saratoga.
