Photo By Madeline Scarborough Austin Schock guides groups of people through the Rufus Putnam House on Saturday, where they are able to meet the volunteers dressed as Rufus Putnam and his wife Persis Rice Putnam as part of the Campus Martius Museum re-enactment day.

MARIETTA — Visitors of the Campus Martius Museum in Marietta were able to take a step back in time on Saturday.

The museum had volunteers who were dressed as Rufus Putnam and his wife Persis Rice Putnam inside the Rufus Putnam House.

“This is something different than a regular tour,” Jane Young, a museum volunteer, said.

“It really makes the house come alive to a degree,” she said.

“The Rufus Putnam House is the oldest house in Ohio, and it still stands on the Campus Martius plot of land,” Young said.

Photo By Madeline Scarborough Austin Schock guides groups of people through the Rufus Putnam House on Saturday, as part of the Campus Martius Museum re-enactment day.

Rufus Putnam, a soldier from the French and Indian War and a general in the American Revolution, is known for many things, including the establishment of the first Ohio Company settlement on the banks of the Ohio River, which was originally known as Adelphia, but is now known as Marietta.

“Many of the early settlers of Ohio Company lands came from New England,” tour guide Austin Schock said.

“They tried to establish similar institutions and communities to those they had left in the East,” he said.

“They had eight children,” Young of the Putnam family, “two boys and six girls.”

“During the war, Persis Putnam was able to support the family through bartering farm products and producing fabrics on her spinning wheel,” he said.

Photo By Madeline Scarborough The Campus Martius Museum had volunteers who were dressed as Rufus Putnam and his wife Persis Rice Putnam playing with bone dominos and a Civil War chess set inside the Rufus Putnam House on Saturday, as part of the museum’s re-enactment day.

Rufus Putnam lived in the Marietta home from 1788 to 1824 when he passed away at age 83.

“To protect the settlement from Native American attacks, the settlers built a fortification known as the Campus Martius,” Schock said.

There is a replica model of the fortification in the museum.

“The Putnam home officially became property of the state of Ohio in 1917, and in 1928 the state of Ohio built the Campus Martius Museum on the site of the original Campus Martius Stockade,” Schock said.

“The Putnam house was permanently enclosed within the Campus Martius Museum in 1933,” he said.

According to Schock, between 1966 and 1972, the Ohio Historical Society restored the Rufus Putnam house to its original condition as an apartment of the campus Martius Stockade, as well as exposing the construction techniques used in the 1796 edition.