Genius of Place Read Free Page A

had died a few years earlier, and Jonathan Law, Charlotte’s adoptive father.
    Even the notion of giving a child a middle name, as in Frederick Law Olmsted, was new in this era. Records show that virtually no one born during colonial times had received one. John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth president, was the first to have a middle name. Over time, American parents began latching onto this long-standing practice of the European gentry, whiff of pretension and all. The year 1822 produced a bumper crop of middle-named babies; Fred-Law’s exact contemporaries include Rutherford Birchard Hayes (the nineteenth president), noted explorer Edward Fitzgerald Beale, and Henry Benjamin Whipple, who
would grow up to be the first Episcopal deacon of the future state of Minnesota.
    Fred was born into a comfortable household on College Street in Hartford. Circa 1822, the state’s capital was a good-size city with a population of nearly 7,000. The place was thriving, thanks to its fortunate location along the banks of the Connecticut River, which flows into Long Island Sound and onward to the Atlantic. This made Hartford perfect as an inland port for shipping traffic between the United States, Europe, and even the Far East. The American insurance industry first took root in Hartford to serve merchants looking for financial protection in the event their wares were lost in shipwrecks. During this period, Hartford also included its share of blacksmiths, saddlers, tailors, masons, and wagon makers. There were thirteen doctors and twenty-two lawyers. There were twelve churches and fourteen taverns.
    Fred’s father was part owner of Olmsted and King, which occupied a prime location, corner of Main and Pearl streets, right near the statehouse. The store specialized in fabrics that arrived by ship, such as silk from France and wool from Germany. These fabrics were used for everything from curtains to neckties to carpeting. John Olmsted had started the store during the War of 1812. By the time of Fred’s birth, it was prospering.
    The senior Olmsted was a big man with broad shoulders and a kind of Abe Lincoln–like awkwardness in both dress and manner. He had a keen mind for business, despite receiving little formal education. He was extremely meticulous, too, and kept a diary of sorts, filled with crabbedscript notations on the finances of both his store and his household. Occasionally, he’d add the briefest mention of something of a more personal flavor, such as an illness or his surprise at an uncharacteristically early spring thaw.
    At times, John Olmsted could appear very gruff. In social situations especially, he would often retreat to the periphery, where he’d sit quietly and uncomfortably. But the reticence masked perhaps the defining trait of Fred’s father. At heart, he was a soft man, capable of real sweetness toward those he loved. His feelings for his young family were fervent.

    John Olmsted also felt an intense patriotism for his native Hartford. This he expressed through generous charitable contributions to such Hartford institutions as the nation’s first public art museum and third insane asylum. Such was his duty, as a seventh-generation descendant of one of the city’s founders, James Olmsted.
    In 1632, this original Olmsted set out from Essex, England, aboard the ship Lyon , bound for America. He had buried his wife and lost four of his seven children. Anxious for a fresh start in the New World, he settled first in the colony of Massachusetts. But in 1636, he joined an expedition led by the Reverend Thomas Hooker that headed south on foot to found a new community. The group wound up in the Connecticut Valley and settled in a place they named Hertford, after a town in England. (It was later Americanized to “Hartford.”) As part of a land distribution, James Olmsted was given 70 acres along a road that became Front Street.
    When Fred was a baby, James Olmsted’s