A century of one family’s reunions reflects the passage of time and the migration of youth from farms across the nation

     

The Putmans still operate dairy farms in New York but
as young members of their family choose other careers
and move away, the farms, and the reunions, have gotten
smaller. (Photo by Austin Santaniello via Unsplash)

The Putmans of upstate New York make the honored practice of getting the family together something more than special, and they have done it for 100 years. New York Times reporter John Leland, who took a road trip to witness the annual event, put it this way: “Lots of families hold reunions. The Putmans make theirs a serious business, with a president, a secretary, a budget, multiple prizes and a written ledger with notes from every year, starting with the second reunion.”

Leland aptly compares the changes apparent from the Putman reunion records to the changes farm families have experienced across America over the last century. And so do the Putmans.

“It is a story of younger people leaving their family farms for job opportunities elsewhere, of farm consolidation and loosening family connections,” Leland writes. In testimony after testimony, Putman family members told Leland of their decision decades ago to leave the family business for something more lucrative. “I knew I didn’t want to milk cows seven days a week,” said one Putman, now 86. “The dairy industry was a tough business, and they weren’t making any money.” In one family, none of the 10 children wanted to milk cows.

The 2025 reunion hosted just 26 members of the family. In years gone by, attendance often exceeded 100. Leland quotes the village historian: “Nobody stays,” she said. “We’re friendly, but there’s nothing to do here, like you can do in a bigger area.”

In a subsequent post in the story’s online reader comments, Leland may have expressed the same feelings as some of the Putmans still coming to the reunion from afar. He wrote:

Sometimes you commit to writing an article and then later think, “What did I get myself into?

That’s how I felt on the six-hour drive upstate. Then the day before the reunion, Janet Newtown showed me the ledger, going back to 1925. The paper was crumbling, and I wore white gloves to touch it. But it was a direct window into a world — not just a family, but a micro-history of small farming in the US, and a way of life for generations.

Sometimes, you’re glad you took that drive.