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

XX Olmsted Family Genealogy
The appraisers of James Olmsted's estate, John Steel and Edw. Stebbing,
neighbors not only in the " New Towne " now called Hartford, but in that
earlier " New Towne " which became Cambridge, note the item, " diuers
smale things in a trunke," valued at £Z. Was it the trunk that " Grandfather
Olmsted " kept for security imder the head of his bed, from which he
used to take the christening blanket to show to favored visitors of an earlier
generation than ours ? He was born May 14, 1776. His great-grandfather,
the grandson of James, died but fourteen years before, and intervening generations
kept the story fresh. There was no chance in this direct and constantly
overlapping succession for memory to distort the facts, however few details
have been transmitted.
Christening blankets similar to this are not unknown, but they are uncommon.
Governor Bradford's (1590) is still preserved, and occasionally
one that has enwrapped babies destined for worthy, if less eminent careers, is
found. The Olmsted blanket, however, is the only one known by the writer
to have been so long in the possession of lineal descendants. By them it has
been treasured in memory of an ancestor whose name is on the Founders'
Monument in Hartford's Ancient Cemetery, and whose earlier home was on
the present site of Harvard University. Thence, after passing a few years
peculiarly honored and trusted by the little community, James Olmsted
preceded his pastor and near neighbor, the Rev. Thomas Hooker, to the
Connecticut Valley, where the christening blanket has been at home for over
two hundred and seventy-five years.
THE OLMSTED TANKARD
Scarcely less interesting than the Olmsted Christening Blanket is the
Olmsted Tankard, which is said to have been brought over also from England
in the good ship " Lyon " in 1632, and which is held to be the " one woodden
cuppe " mentioned in the inventory of the estate of James Olmsted. It is
now in the possession of his descendant, Mr. Ralph Wm. Cutler, of Hartford,
Conn. It is made of white cedar, with handle and cover of white pine and
hoops of split willow.
Such tankards were occasionally brought to America by the early colonists,
but only a few of them are still in existence. For its age, its unusual beauty
of outline, and the memories that attach to this old cedar " cuppe," from
which the Olmsteds may have drunk to the success of their quest for liberty
in a new land, before setting out from their English home, we prize the Olmsted
Tankard.