Genealogy of the Olmsted family in America : embracing the ...

xviii Olmsted Family Genealogy
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,^ 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;jnade
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 (wAo was ill) was borne
through the wilderness upon a litter. The people generally carried their
packs, arms, and some utensils. They w^re 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 prob-
able, 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 groimd 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.^
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 of the English People, London, 1889, Part III.
John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England , Boston, 1898.
Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut, New Haven, 1818, Vol. I.
George Leon Walker, History of the First Church in Hartford, Hartford, 1884.