In 1911, Putnam married Dorothy Binney (1888–1982), the daughter of Edwin Binney, inventor and co-owner, with cousin C. Harold Smith, of Binney & Smith Inc., the company that made Crayola crayons. They had two sons, David Binney Putnam (1913–1992) and George Palmer Putnam, Jr. (1921-2013), and for a time lived in Bend, Oregon, where Putnam was the publisher and editor of the local newspaper, the "Bend Bulletin". He was mayor of Bend from 1912 to 1913. Putnam left Bend in 1915 to become the private secretary to Oregon Governor James Withycombe.