NOANK, Conn., Feb. 7 - Secure from the eyes of the millions who have acclaimed her America's most famous aviatrix, Miss Amelia Earhart, slender blonde social service worker, who has been the only woman to fly the Atlantic in an airplane, was married here at noon today to George Palmer Putnam, publisher, author and explorer, of New York in his mother's New England home overlooking Long Island Sound.

Noank is a quaint little village, celebrated in Summer time chiefly for the excellence of the lobsters its fishing population brings up from the Sound and for the flavor of the strawberries and the melon-rind preserves served in its lone tea house. In Winter Noank dozes. Nothing as interesting as this has happened there since the big wind and tidal wave of '78. And when something did happen to put Noank on the front pages of New York newspapers, nobody knew about it until the bride and bridegroom had motored away, as they did immediately after the ceremony, for an unknown destination.

The ceremony itself, performed by Probate Judge Arthur Anderson of Groton, Conn., consumed but five minutes. The only witnesses were Mrs. Frances Putnam, Mr. Putnam's mother; Charles Faulkner, his uncle; Robert Anderson, the judge's son, and twin black cats.

Phones Wedding Announcement
As Mr. Putnam slipped a plain platinum ring on Miss Earhart's finger the cats, coal black and playful, rubbed arched backs against his ankles. Then, while Miss Earhart, who has been said to resemble Colonel Lindbergh, put on a brown fur coat over a brown suit and light brown blouse, Mr. Putnam telephoned his secretary, Miss Josephine Herger, in New York, announcing the wedding.

Immediate afterward he and Mrs. Putnam bade the others goodbye and drove down the winding lane leading from the cream-colored, two-story house to the main Connecticut highway and the outside world.

"They didn't tell me where they were going, so that I shouldn't be able to tell," said Mrs. Putnam Sr. an hour after the wedding.

Bride and bridegroom - he is 42 and she 32 - were extremely happy but undemonstrative, Mrs. Putnam said. Miss Earhart asked to have it known that she will retain her own name for business and writing purposes. Both will be at their desks in New York, on Monday morning -- she at the Pan-American Airways Company and he in his publishing firm.

The comfortable old house, said to be about eighty years old, was an ideal setting for a family wedding. With ample grounds, standing next to the local Baptist church, it is the picture of New England charm and simplicity. The ceremony, lighted by the sun's rays, for the day was cold but clear, took place in the low-ceilinged living room on the ground floor facing the southwest. The wall of this room, which is lined with bookcases in which books by Mr. Putnam and his 17-year-old son, David Binney Putnam, stand out, are painted with a mustard yellow, adding to the homelike cheerfulness. As the judge performed the ceremony a crackling fire burned in the fireplace.

Got License on Nov. 8
The house had long been set as the scene of the wedding. As long ago as Nov. 8, the couple obtained a license for marriage here, and thereafter there were rumors that they had already been married. These, however, were denied. Mrs. Putnam Sr. said today that the engagement dated back about three months, and that it was not until last night that she was informed that they were to be married today.

"They telephoned me from New York and told me they would be married here today," she said. Then they motored out last night and made arrangements with Judge Anderson, a friend of the family.

"There was no fuss, no religious ceremony, no demonstration," said Mrs. Putnam, pointing out that the house contained no flowers and that no one in the neighborhood had been informed. Brown shoes and stockings and a close-fitting brown hat were worn by Miss Earhart in addition to her brown traveling suit. Brown, it seems, is her favorite color. Mrs. Putnam Sr. wore a gray Canton crepe house dress, and Mr. Putnam and the other men wore business attire.

Mrs. Putnam Sr. said she had never flown, but that, although somewhat fearful, she intended to take a flight with Miss Earhart soon.

"I'll take you for a ride the next time I come up here," she quoted her daughter-in-law as remarking.

"I'll not be afraid with her," she said.

So little was known of the Putnams' affairs in the village that when inquiry was made of Miss Gladys Doyle, postoffice clerk, she said: "I don't think there was any marriage in the village today." All she knew of the Putnams was that Mrs. Putnam Sr. had moved there about a year ago.

Miss Earhart did not promise to "obey" her husband, as the word is not included in the civil ceremony.

Couple Met in 1928.
The couple met in 1928, when Mr. Putnam was preparing to manage and direct the famous transatlantic flight which Miss Earhart was to take with the late Wilmer Stultz, pilot, and Lou Gordon, mechanic, in the tri-motored Fokker Friendship. The flight, with Miss Earhart a passenger, was made on June 17-18, 1928, in 20 hours and 49 minutes from Trepassey, N.F., to Burry Port, Wales.

Although an experienced airplanist, who had flown much before and who later distinguished herself as a pilot, Miss Earhart did not handle the controls during the flight. Characteristically modest, she wrote of it for The New York Times: "I was a passenger on the journey - just a passenger. Everything that was done to bring us across was done by Wilmer Stultz and Slim Gordon. Any praise I can give them they ought to have. You can't pile it on too thick."

The men, however, were eclipsed in the welcomes given Miss Earhart in Europe and this country. From that time on she was famous. Aviation absorbed her thereafter. She had been the first woman to receive a pilot's certificate from the National Aeronautics Association in 1923, and now she flew constantly.

At one time she held the women's altitude record, having reached a height of 14,000 feet in 1920. In 1928 she flew her light Avro Avian plane across the continent and back, being the first woman to make the journey solo. Subsequently she has owned and flown a Lockheed Vega monoplane powered with a Wasp motor, which she has used constantly for business and pleasure.

In a Lockheed last Summer she established the first women's world speed record and for two hears she has held a transport license, a pilot's highest rating. She is the author of "Twenty Hours and Forty Minutes," the story of her transatlantic flight.

She was born in Atchison, Kan. Her father, Edwin S. Earhart, a railroad attorney, died in California last September. Her mother resides in Philadelphia. She attended the Ogontz School and later Columbia University and served in Canada as a "V. A. D." during the war. She did educational extension work for the State of Massachusetts while living in Boston and later was associated with Denison House in Boston, where she became a settlement worker.

In April 1928, when the transatlantic flight was in preparation, with Mrs. Frederick Guest financing it, Mr. Putnam selected Miss Earhart to make the flight. She had done much flying in the West, having begun to fly in California in 1918. Today she is regarded by many as the foremost woman flier in the country.

Somewhat pale and slight, she does not look the outdoor girl she has always been. Her interest in aviation has not been confined to flying and her book. She was for a time aviation editor of The Cosmopolitan Magazine and formerly was associated with Transcontinental Air Transport. Since Sept. 1, 1930, she has been vice president of the New York-Philadelphia-Washington Airway Corporation, with offices in the Chanin Building.

Mr. Putnam is the grandson of the late George Palmer Putnam and a son of the late John Bishop Putnam, as well as a nephew of the late Major George Haven Putnam. Last August he withdrew from his position as secretary of G.P. Putnam's Sons and the next month became vice president of Brewer & Warren, publishers, 6 East Fifty-third Street.

In publishing he has especially devoted himself to works on exploration and adventure, having been responsible for the books of Colonel Lindbergh, Rear Admiral Byrd, Roy Chapman Andrews, Captain Bob Bartlett, Martin Johnson and others. His elder son, David Binney Putnam, has written three books about his explorations with William Beebe in the tropics and with his father in the North.

Mr. Putnam organized and headed two scientific expeditions, one to Greenland under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History and the other to Baffin Island for the American Geographical Society. He is the author of four books, his most recent one having been "Andree, the Record of a Tragic Adventure," in which he described the pioneer efforts of the explorer Andree to reach the North Pole by air and the flight's tragic aftermath.

Mr. Putnam's marriage was his second, his first wife, Mrs. Dorothy Binney Putnam, having divorced him in Reno, Nev., in December, 1929, on a formal charge of failure to provide. Under its terms she and their children, David and George Palmer Jr., are provided for under a joint trust. She was married on Jan. 12, 1930, in the West Indies to Captain Frank Monroe Upton of New York, one of the heroes of the steamship Antinoe rescues.

George Palmer Putnam Jr., who is 9 years old, is in Florida with his mother, and David Binney Putnam is a student at the Roxbury School, Cheshire, Conn. The children, it was said, spend part of their time with each parent.

Miss Earhart was at one time engaged to Samuel Chapman, young Boston attorney, but she announced on Nov. 22, 1928, in Cleveland, that the engagement had been broken. "You never can tell what I will do," she said at the time. "If I was sure of the man, I might get married tomorrow. I am very sudden, you know, and make up my mind in a second."

Since living in New York Miss Earhart has resided first at the Greenwich Settlement House and, until now, at the American Women's Association Clubhouse here. Mr. Putnam has a country home at Rye, N.Y., but the couple for the present will occupy an apartment at the Hotel Wyndham, 42 West Fifty-eighth Street.

Mr. Putnam is vice president of the Explorers Club and a member of the Harvard, Wilderness, Century, Campfire, Coffee House and Apawamis Clubs. He attended Harvard University and the University of California.