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6/27/2008
Ch 186 Olmsted Roots before potatoes it was Beantown
visited by Carol and Lyle- no report filed yet...
Genealogy of the Olmsted Family in America (free download-unbelievable) Embracing the Descendants of James and Richard Olmsted and Covering a Period of Nearly Three Centuries, 1632-1912 By Henry King Olmsted, George Kemp Ward
As to our direct ancestors we have been able by the aid of the church records of Fairsted and of Great Leighs to trace descent with a reasonable degree of accuracy from one Richard Olmsted born about 1430 whose descendant James married Alice and had three sons of whom James Jr born about 1550 by his wife Jane Bristow was father of another James the Colonist and of Richard the father of the three young emigrants who accompanied their Uncle James to New England namely Richard John and Rebecca.
The cause of the emigration of our Puritan forefathers from England to America is a matter of historical record but it may not be amiss to recall the subject here.
During the last half of the reign of Queen Elizabeth a great change had come over the people of England As Green puts it England became the people of a book and that book was the Bible Even the love of pure letters of the Renaissance gave way to the love of this book It was in everybody's home and its influence upon the mind and conscience of the people was amazing A new conception of life and of man superseded the old Theology rules there said Grotius speaking of England shortly after Elizabeth's death.
A certain gravity of demeanor disclosed itself even in the country gentlemen like our ancestors whose diversions before this had been of the lighter such as hawking fencing and dancing The brilliancy of dress of the disappeared A more sober vestment characterized the Puritans an increasing fondness for simplicity in all things but especially in the of worship Most of the Puritans were undesirous of separating themselves from the Church of England but they attempted to purify it from and to simplify its ritual which reminded them of popery They to wear the surplice to baptize with the sign of the cross to bow at the of Jesus to make use of the ring in the marriage ceremony and to the divine of the authority of the episcopate.
Elizabeth had tried in vain to force her people into an acceptance of the church administration that she prescribed and had gone so far as to execute certain non conformists.
Then came James the hope of the Puritans but although educated as a Presbyterian upon his accession to the throne he renounced the Calvinistic sympathies he had cherished in Scotland and turned a deaf ear to the pleas of his Puritan subjects.
It was about this time that the Separatist congregation at Scrooby succeeded in leaving England and settled for a brief while in Holland whither a portion set sail for the New World in the Mayflower landing at Plymouth Dec 21 1620.
INTRODUCTION
Meanwhile the Puritans remaining in England had fallen upon bitter days by the accession in 1625 of Charles I to the throne of his father The new monarch's chief religious advisor was Wm Laud Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury This eminent but narrow minded divine was a formalist by temperament and education The crude simplicity of the reformed church was repugnant to him and he determined to restore to the Church of England the pomp and ceremonial that he deemed was its rightful possession as a branch of the great Catholic Church of the world.
Bowing to the altar was introduced into all cathedral churches The communion table was given its pre Reformation position in the chancel instead of the position it had occupied for more than half a century in the middle of the nave Most shocking of all to Puritan standards diversions on the Sabbath day were not only encouraged by Laud and his supporters but every English pastor was compelled by royal order to read from the pulpit a declaration in favor of Sunday pastimes Refusal to comply with these and similar orders was met with fines imprisonment confiscation of property and even execution.
Such was the condition of affairs in 1630 when in the County of Essex in the neighborhood of our Olmsted ancestors the Reverend Mr Thomas Hooker a preacher of great ability and renown was silenced for non conformity To escape imprisonment and worse he fled to Holland Indeed it was well that he fled for he might have met the fate of another non conformist minister who was that same year pilloried whipped branded slit in the nostrils and deprived by successive mutilation of his ears.
Up to this time emigration to America had been slow and the colony in New England numbered only some few hundred souls but now the Puritan exodus began upon an unprecedented scale Two hundred Puritans had recently embarked for Salem These were soon followed by eight hundred more under John Winthrop These in turn were followed by seven hundred more In all seventeen ships had beaten their way across the seas before the close of the year 1630 Nor were these emigrants as Green declares like the earlier colonists of the South broken men adventurers bankrupts criminals or simply poor men and artisans like the Pilgrim Fathers of the Mayflower They were in great part men of the professional and middle classes some of them men of large landed estate.
Of the latter class was the family of our honored relative James Olmsted who together with two sons Nicholas and Nehemiah two nephews Richard and John and a niece Rebecca arrived in New England on the Lord's Day Sept 16 1632 in the ship Lyon under Capt Pierce after a voyage of 12 weeks from Brain tree England There were 123 passengers of whom 50 were children.
They settled first at Mount Wallaston now Quincy near Boston but in the course of the year by order of the Court they removed to Newtown now Cambridge.
The recent settlers of Newtown says Holmes had while in England attended the ministry of the Reverend Thomas Hooker who to escape fines and imprisonment for his non conformity had now fled into Holland So as Mather another contemporary remarks immediately after their settlement at Newtown they expressed their earnest desires to Mr Hooker that he would come over into New England and take the pastoral charge of them At their desire he left Holland and having obtained Mr Samuel Stone as an assistant in the ministry took his passage for America and arrived at Boston Sept 4 1633.
He proceeded at once to Newtown to take up the duties of his pastorate There the Braintree Colony as it was termed abode until the summer of 1636 when dissatisfied by the form of government of the colony of Massachusetts and tempted by the charm of this pleasant Connecticut valley of which they had heard reports 1 they took their departure from Cambridge and in the words of Trumbull travelled more than a hundred miles through a hideous and trackless wilderness to Hartford They had no guide but their compass made their way over mountains through swamps thickets and rivers which were not passable but with great difficulty They had no cover but the heavens nor any lodgings but those which simple nature afforded them They drove with them a hundred and sixty head of cattle and by the way subsisted on the milk of their cows Mrs Hooker who was ill was borne through the wilderness upon a litter The people generally carried their packs arms and some utensils They were nearly a fortnight on their journey.
This brings us in our narration of the wanderings of our worthy family to the beautiful city near which we have met today to do them honor The family was soon to separate Indeed my own ancestor Richard Olmsted who was a youth of 20 when he arrived in America with his Uncle James was now a young man of 24 That he was married by 1640 is more than probable for we find that by that date he had quit his uncle's house and was in possession of a home lot of his own The records show that at a town meeting on the 1 1th of January 1640 a vote was passed taking part of the lot of Richard Olmsted for a burial ground This is the ground in the rear of the First Church buildings on Main Street as Walker tells us where so many of Hartford's early dead still repose It contains a monument to the early settlers of this city and is worthy of a pilgrimage if any of you have not yet seen it James Olmsted's lot was on Front street not far from where the gas works now stand.
However as I have said the family was soon to part company The wanderlust was upon them and in 1651 Richard Olmsted defying the dangers of wild beast and Indian struck still deeper into the wilderness and founded with his family and with other friends the town of Norwalk.
There remains to me now only the pleasant duty of welcoming to this meeting you my kinsmen and friends who have deemed it worth while to check the busy looms of toil and to ponder a little upon the courage upon the devotion to principle and upon the love of liberty that characterized our revered forefathers
2 1 James Olmsted is said to have been one of twelve men dispatched by the Colony in the summer of 1634 to investigate lands along the Connecticut River 2 The author is indebted for some of the matter in the foregoing sketch to the following works John Richard Green A Short History oj tbe English People London 1889 Part III John Fiske The Beginnings oj New England Boston 1898 Benjamin Trumbull A Complete History of Connecticut New Haven 1818 Vol I George Leon Walker History oj the First Church in Hartford Hartford 1884
The same family of Olmsteds came together but some names ended up spelled Olmstead insted or instead.
1 passenger list (packrat has awesome immigrant name and ship name index)
Richard Olmstead landed at Charlestown Sep 16, 1632 on the fourth trek of the English ship the Lyon. Their group was know as the Braintree Company from Great Leighs, Fairstead, Essex, England. The passenger list uses the common alternate spelling Olmstead. Richard Olmstead was a puritan seeking religious freedom as a pilgrim along with 2 siblings John and Rebeccca, nephews Richard and John (or Nicholas and Nehemiah) and Uncle James Olmsted (maybe wife Joyce, or maybe she died along with 4 other kids back in England) from whom descended the renowned landscape architect, Fredrick Law Olmsted. James began as constable in Cambridge and ended up in Hartford, CT (free download) James and Richard founding fathers (proprietors) of Cambridge, and Hartford, CT. Richard a judge, died in Norwalk, CT.
James and Richard Olmsted founded Suckiaug
Fredrick Law Olmsted and American Urban Parks Video 57min
Pg 14
It is a tradition that the earliest Norwalk comers, led by the surveyors, Richard Olmsted and Richard Webb, cut their way through the forests lying; between Hartford and Norwalk and fording the Saugatuck some two miles from its mouth arrived j first at the "Rocks" from whence after a brief tarry they wended in a souther- ly direction and finally established themselves in what is now known as East Norwalk building, it is believed, their "companie house" close by the ancient "Fairfield Path" which is in 1901 denominated "Fort Point Street." The street called to-day East Avenue was Norwalk's primus path. Along it the settlers built their first dwell- ings and the original proprietors limited their growth on this path or street to the upper end of "Goodman Hoyt's" or "Meeting House" hill. This was the extreme north- ern boundry of the original settlement which, however, soon transcended this boundary and extended quite to the northward, reaching in 1664, the "Whitney Mill" at the foot of the "Mill Hill" of the current year.
Pg 26
Richard Olmsted, naturally endowed and acquire- ment-gifted, was a visitor beneath that humble roof, and so was Matthias St. John, of acknowledged descent, and Nathaniel Ely and Nathaniel Richards, whose converse before his Norwalk residence was with the eminent of the land, and Ruth Clark, sister-in-law of the first rector of Yale College, and Richard Raymond, the honored fore- father of five commodores in the American Navy.
HISTORY OF THE
EAST NORWALK SCHOOL
Pg 109
By Augustus C. Golding.
HE first mention of a school in the town proceedings is dated May 29, 1678. The town voted and agreed to hire a school master to teach all of the children in the town to read, and write, and the Townsmen (selectmen) were instructed to hire Mr. Cornish on as reasonable terms as they can. Feb. 20, 1679, (Richard's son) James Olmsted was appointed school master to set copies for the children. Nov. 17, 1679, it was voted to build a school house 20 ft. long 18 ft. wide, posts 7ft., and to be not less than 6 ft. from floor to ceil- ing ; it was to stand between Samuel Keeler's corner and the water flood, which has been located near the barn of W. S. Hanford, directly in front of the upper school house.
Ezekial Olmstead branch founded Broadalbin
Berkshires, Mass - Olmsted historical genealogical links
back to early Olmsted in Boston Ch 186B
There is a theory that the Olmsteds descended from the Vikings that ravaged England from the eighth to the eleventh century. In 1979 Kathy and I did attempt to investigate that hypothesis while visiting the Tower of London
It is said that Olmsted comes from the Dutch meaning "home by Elms" which is appropriate if you've notice my references to them in front of our old house (tire swings etc). When I recently spoke with the curator of the Henry Hudson Half Moon reproduction ship in Albany about our ancestry, I'd asked him if the XXX marked flags aboard signified porn. He explained that it could but it was also the flag of Amsterdam (three St Andrew's Crosses) but that's for another chapter.
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