Genius of Place

by Justin Martin

  11 To learn grammar: Books FLO used drawn from JO diary and Theodora Kimball’s notes for Forty Years of Landscape Architecture, both in Library of Congress.

  11 “The way of man”: Noah Webster, The American Spelling Book (Hartford: Hudson, 1822), 43.

  12 “infinite love”: Autobiographical Fragment A, FLO Papers, Library of Congress.

  12 “Miss Naomi Rockwell buried”: JO diary, February 8, 1829.

  13 “I was strangely uneducated”: FLO to Elizabeth Baldwin Whitney, December 16, 1890.

  13 Fred headed out: Details regarding FLO childhood rambles drawn mostly from Autobiographical Fragment A.

  14 “I was under no”: Ibid.

  15 explored his grandmother’s book collection: Ibid.

  15 “strong discipline”: Hartford Courant, January 19, 1830.

  15 “I was very active, imaginative”: Autobiographical fragment, reprinted in The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, vol. 1, The Formative Years (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 110.

  16 Fred lived with three: Details of life with Joab Brace drawn mostly from Autobiographical Fragment A.

  17 poison sumac: Autobiographical Fragment B, FLO Papers, Library of Congress.

  17 Reverend George Clinton Van Vechten Eastman: Papers, 1:110.

  18 “we begin to feel”: JO to FLO, Oct 7, 1838.

  19 “I hear Fred’k coming”: JO to JHO, 1840 [no month or day specified].

  19 “Dear brother,” begins a letter: FLO to JHO, June 9, 1840.

  20 Mrs. Howard’s boardinghouse: Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 18.

  20 He hated the job: Evidence that Olmsted hated working at Benkard and Hutton drawn from FLO to JHO, August 29, 1840, and FLO to Charles Brace, June 22, 1845.

  Chapter 2: At Sea

  21 As captain of the Huntress: Henry King Olmsted and George Kemp Ward, Genealogy of the Olmsted Family in America (New York: A. T. De La Mare Printing and Publishing, 1912), 36.

  21 In 1777, Olmsted was: Joseph Olcott Goodwin, East Hartford: Its History and Traditions (Hartford: Case, Lockwood, and Brainard, 1879), 83–84.

  22 teamed up with Jim Goodwin: Papers, 1:136.

  23 Fox impressed Fred: FLO to JHO, April 8, 1843.

  23 “Now’s the time”: Ibid.

  24 an almanac, a sea chest: Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 22.

  24 “drowndered”: FLO to JHO, April 10, 1843.

  24 nearly thirty other ships: FLO’s Ronaldson voyage diary covering April 24–August 9, 1843, FLO Papers, Library of Congress.

  24 To shed some weight: FLO, “A Voice from the Sea,” American Whig Review, December 1851.

  25 Fred was put to work: Details about Olmsted’s shipboard duties from FLO’s Ronaldson voyage diary, Library of Congress.

  25 get to his sea chest: FLO to parents, August 6, 1843.

  25 “Bah!”: Foul-food dialogue from FLO’s Ronaldson voyage diary.

  27 “set the lee foretopmast”: Nautical lingo taken from various letters FLO wrote while onboard the Ronaldson.

  27 A sailor lost his purchase: FLO to parents, August 6, 1843.

  27 Then Fred fell: FLO to JHO, December 10, 1843.

  27 furl the sails: FLO’s Ronaldson voyage diary.

  28 captain’s-table prerogative: FLO to parents, September 5, 1843.

  29 Fox did not swear: FLO to JHO, December 10, 1843.

  29 “Well, he’s a most”: Ibid.

  30 “My opportunities of observation”: FLO to JO, September 24, 1843.

  31 “I’ve heard much more”: FLO to JHO, December 10, 1843.

  31 “But I was glad”: FLO to Maria Olmsted, November 30, 1843.

  32 “What are you taking”: Details of temple visit from “The Real China,” an unpublished essay that Olmsted wrote in 1856, reprinted in Papers, 1:187.

  32 “turkeys & cranberry”: FLO to Maria Olmsted, November 30, 1843.

  32 “Fred’s company much wanted”: JO diary, November 30, 1843.

  32 the fresher the tea: Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Scribner, 1999), 53–54.

  33 flogged him repeatedly: Details and dialogue from near-mutiny episode drawn from “A Voice from the Sea.”

  33 On April 20, 1844: Date taken from Theodora Kimball’s notes for Forty Years of Landscape Architecture.

  34 looking yellow and skeletal: MPO memo, FLO Papers, Library of Congress.

  34 “Well, how do you”: FLO to JHO, December 10, 1843.

  Chapter 3: Uncommon Friends

  35 sat nearly an entire day: FLO to Brace, July 30, 1846.

  36 Brace came from a family: Description of Brace drawn from multiple sources, including The Life of Charles Loring Brace, ed. Emma Brace (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894).

  37 “Intense earnestness”: Ibid., 8.

  37 “uncommon set of common friends”: Letter from Brace to Frederick Kingsbury in 1846, quoted in ibid., 27.

  37 “honorary member of the Class of ’47”: FLO Jr. and Theodora Kimball, eds., Forty Years of Landscape Architecture, vol. 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922), 5.

  38 “Infantile Chemistry Association”: FLO to Brace, July 30, 1846.

  38 “I have a smattering education”: FLO to Kingsbury, June 12, 1846, typed version in “Kingsbury Sketch,” Library of Congress.

  39 “’Twas a fine day”: FLO to JHO, September 13, 1845.

  39 “He has dreamed about”: MAO to JO, August 8, 1844.

  40 “I am desperately in love”: FLO to Brace, February 5, 1845.

  40 “rouse a sort of scatter-brained pride”: FLO to Elizabeth Baldwin Whitney, December 16, 1890.

  40 “Governor’s daughter. Excellent princess”: FLO to Brace, February 5, 1846.

  40 “private opportunity”: FLO to JHO, March 2, 1846.

  41 “right smack & square”: FLO to JHO, March 27, 1846.

  42 “self-examination was carried”: Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe: Compiled from Her Letters and Journals, pt. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1890), 35.

  42 “I think there is nothing”: MAO to JHO, March 1846 [no day specified in letter].

  42 “how highly bless’d”: MAO to JHO, April 3, 1846.

  42 “Thank God for Miss Baldwin”: FLO to Brace, March 27, 1846.

  43 “God’s fever attended me”: FLO to JHO, April 7, 1846.

  44 “any inclination for Agriculture”: FLO to Brace, June 22, 1845.

  44 just a few hundred feet: Geddes obituary, New York Times, October 9, 1883.

  44 “Geddes Canal”: Detail from Daniel Klein and John Majewski, Promoters and Investors in Antebellum America: The Spread of Plank Road Fever (Berkeley: University of California Transportation Center, 1991).

  44 variety of different foodstuffs: Details about Fairmount farm such as acreage and what was grown there drawn from the Cultivator, July 1846.

  44 “grind a bushel”: FLO to JO, July 23, 1846.

  44 inventor of the Geddes’ Harrow: Details about Geddes’s inventions from Klein and Majewski, Promoters and Investors in Antebellum America.

  45 “I do think Carlyle”: FLO to JO, August 12, 1846.

  46 “Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand”: Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (Boston: James Munroe, 1840), 200.

  46 copied it into a letter to his brother: FLO to JHO, December 13, 1846.

  46 “silver forks every day”: FLO to JO, July 1, 1846.

  Chapter 4: A Farmer and Finite

  48 As he spelled out: FLO to JHO, September 1846 [no day specified in letter].

  49 But the farm itself: Description of Sachem’s Head farm taken largely from “Kingsbury Sketch,” FLO Papers, Library of Congress.

  49 “Real juicy”: FLO to JHO, February 16, 1847.

  50 “I don’t believe”: JHO to Kingsbury, March 27, 1847.

  50 �
�fine capabilities”: JHO to Kingsbury, May 1847 [no day specified in letter].

  50 “I hope the present”: JHO to Kingsbury, March 13, 1847.

  50 “It is pretty much”: Kingsbury to JHO, May 8, 1847.

  50 very first published works: Boston Cultivator, March 13, 1847, as referenced in Papers, 1:290.

  51 “F. L. Olmsted, Sachem’s Head”: Horticulturist, August 1847.

  51 “There’s a great work”: FLO to Brace, July 26, 1847.

  52 “so far look bountifully”: Ibid.

  52 “Well, the world needs”: Kingsbury to JHO, May 8, 1847.

  53 belonged to Dr. Samuel Akerly: Description of Tosomock Farm drawn from multiple sources including Staten Island Historian (January–March 1954) and “Kingsbury Sketch.”

  54 Olmsted considered “Entepfuhl”: FLO to Kingsbury, November 17, 1848.

  54 “Here I am now”: Ibid.

  54 a corruption of Tesschenmakr: Staten Island Historian (October–December 1953); FLO to William James, July 8, 1891.

  54 “One thing, Fred”: JHO to Kingsbury, March 1848 [no day specified in letter].

  54 transforming the property: Staten Island Historian (January–March 1954).

  55 Increasingly, Staten Island: Description of Staten Island drawn partly from Charles Leng and William Davis, Staten Island and Its People: A History, 1609–1929 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1930).

  56 “But the amount of talking”: Letter from Brace to Kingsbury, September 30, 1848, quoted in The Life of Charles Loring Brace, ed. Emma Brace (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 61.

  56 Olmsted began making improvements: “Kingsbury Sketch.”

  57 William Vanderbilt even requested: Staten Island Historian (April–June 1954).

  57 learned that King Louis Philippe: Ibid.

  57 “Here are two close”: FLO to Kingsbury, December 13, 1848.

  58 “just the thing for”: FLO to Kingsbury, July 16, 1848.

  58 “A marriageable young lady”: JHO to Kingsbury, December 11, 1849.

  59 “nothing but Hog-French”: JHO to Kingsbury, October 30, 1848.

  60 “We ask you, then”: FLO, “Appeal to the Citizens of Staten Island,” December 1849, reprinted in Papers, 1:331–334.

  60 “For the matter of”: FLO to Brace, June 22, 1845.

  Chapter 5: Two Pilgrimages

  61 “I have a just”: FLO to JO, March 1, 1850.

  62 costing them $12 apiece: FLO, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (Amherst, MA: Library of American Landscape History, 2002), Charles McLaughlin’s introduction, xxv.

  63 had to see Birkenhead Park: Description of Olmsted’s visit to the park, ibid., 90–96.

  63 Olmsted’s first brush: Description of first visit to English countryside, ibid., 98–99.

  64 Crosskill’s Patent Clod-Crusher Roller: Ibid., 192.

  64 grounds of Chirk Castle: Description of Olmsted’s visit to Chirk Castle, ibid., 224–225.

  65 71¢ per day: FLO to JO, August 11, 1850.

  65 “The fact is evident”: FLO to Brace, November 12, 1850.

  66 “The mere fact of”: FLO to Brace, January 11, 1851.

  67 His pronouncements, delivered: Characterization of Downing’s aesthetics drawn from assorted issues of the Horticulturist and August 14, 2009, interview, JM with Francis Kowsky, author of Country, Park, and City: The Architecture and Life of Calvert Vaux (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  68 “A Note on the True”: Horticulturist, December 1852.

  69 “one farmer’s leg”: FLO, Walks and Talks, preface, 1859 edition, 9.

  69 “Sit ye down now”: Ibid., 212.

  69 “What artist so noble”: Ibid., 145.

  70 “As it is”: FLO to Brace, January 11, 1851.

  70 “The sun shines”: FLO to Brace, November 12, 1850.

  70 “The conclusion is”: FLO to Kingsbury, February 10, 1849.

  71 “Sit erect when you”: JO to JHO [undated].

  71 “sentence of death”: JHO to Kingsbury, August 11, 1851.

  71 tuberculosis was an “incipient” form: FLO to Kingsbury, August 5, 1851.

  71 “revulsion of feeling”: JHO to Kingsbury, September 12, 1851.

  72 “I am to be examined”: JHO to Kingsbury, October 12, 1851.

  72 “seems to me somebody”: FLO to JO, November 21, 1851.

  Chapter 6: “The South”

  74 During its first year: Account of Uncle Tom’s Cabin sales from “Tomitudes,” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, January 1853.

  74 In Boston alone, three hundred: Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley, Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 66.

  75 Olmsted remained a gradualist: Characterization of Olmsted as a gradualist drawn from FLO, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (Amherst, MA: Library of American Landscape History, 2002), 241, and FLO to JO, August 12, 1846.

  76 forebears had been slaveholders: Support for Olmsted’s forebears as slaveholders drawn from Lee Paquette, Only More So: The History of East Hartford, 1783–1976 (East Hartford, CT: Raymond Library, 1976), 234.

  76 “red hot abolitionist”: FLO to Kingsbury, October 17, 1852.

  77 On the decline: Elmer Holmes Davis, History of the “New York Times,” 1851–1921 (New York: New York Times, 1921), 7.

  78 “diverting the public mind”: New York Sun article quoted in Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690–1960, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 226.

  78 “We do not mean”: Prospectus, quoted in Davis, History of the “New York Times, ” 21.

  78 Circulation had immediately shrunk: Ibid., 26.

  78 “matter of fact matter”: FLO to Kingsbury, October 17, 1852.

  79 tailed a funeral procession: Description of funeral procession from FLO, A Journey Through the Seaboard Slave States (New York: Mason Brothers, 1861), 24–26.

  80 “You can’t imagine”: FLO to Brace, February 23, 1853.

  80 “The mean temperature”: “The South,” no. 2, New-York Daily Times, February 19, 1853.

  80 In a letter to his father: FLO to JO, January 10, 1853.

  81 “French friterzeed Dutch flabbergasted”: FLO, A Journey in the Back Country (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), 135.

  81 “This is a hard life”: “The South,” no. 2, New-York Daily Times, February 19, 1853.

  82 “I lubs ’ou mas’r”: FLO, Seaboard Slave States, 434.

  82 “Oh God! Who are we”: “The South,” no. 10, New-York Daily Times, April 8, 1853.

  83 “They are forever complaining”: “The South,” no. 7, New-York Daily Times, March 17, 1853.

  84 “What! Slaves eager to work”: FLO, Seaboard Slave States, 355.

  85 “If I was free”: Ibid., 679.

  86 “I reckon a dollar”: Ibid., 86.

  87 “He tenaciously and patiently”: Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 221.

  87 “What that? Hallo!”: “The South,” no. 44, New-York Daily Times, November 21, 1853.

  Chapter 7: Tief Im Herzen Von Texas

  89 “The Times, however”: Savannah Republican, February 22, 1853.

  89 it had returned to 25,000: Francis Brown, Raymond of the “Times” (New York: W. W. Norton, 1951), 106.

  89 “The Times signaled itself”: Rollo Ogden, The Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 113.

  90 host of a Greenwich Village salon: Description of Anne Charlotte Lynch’s salon drawn largely from Luther Harris, Around Washington Square: An Illustrated History of Greenwich Village (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 96.

  90 “knew all the distinguished people”: FLO to JO, May 19, 1853.

  90 “Here was another”: FLO, “Gold Under Gilt,” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine, July 1853.

  93 “Well, the moral”: FLO to Brace, December 1, 1853.
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  94 “After a little practice”: FLO, A Journey Through Texas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 76.

  94 Drovers was the appellation: Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Scribner, 1999), 126.

  94 “We should have”: FLO, A Journey Through Texas, 71–72.

  95 “She was made up”: Ibid., 93.

  96 He was surprised: Olmsted’s first intimation of Germans in Texas was the copy of San Antonio Zeitung encountered in Bastrop, according to his own account in A Journey Through Texas, 133, and also Rudolph Biesele, The History of the Germans in Texas, 1831–1861 (Austin: Press of Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1930), 225.

  97 “I have never”: FLO, A Journey Through Texas, 143.

  98 Germans started pouring: Many details about Germans settling in Texas drawn from R. L. Biesele, “The Texas State Convention of Germans in 1854,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly (April 1930).

  98 community of 3,000: FLO, A Journey Through Texas, 180–181.

  99 “We have no other”: Ibid., 150.

  100 fifty-seven papers: FLO, “Appeal for Funds for The San Antonio Zeitung,” October 1854, reprinted in The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, vol. 2, Slavery and the South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 316.

  100 one of five such settlements: Names of the five communities can be found at “Latin Settlements of Texas,” The Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org.

  100 belted out “student songs”: FLO, A Journey Through Texas, 198.

  101 “But how much of”: Ibid., 199.

  101 John sent a letter: JHO to MPO, March 12, 1854.

  Chapter 8: A Red-Hot Abolitionist

  103 Lately, Douai had become: Many details of Douai’s rift with fellow Germans drawn from Laura Wood Roper, “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Western Texas Free-Soil Movement,” American Historical Review (October 1950).

  104 “A Few Dollars Wanted”: FLO, “A Few Dollars Wanted to Help the Cause of Future Freedom in Texas,” October 1854, reprinted in Papers, 2:319–320.

  104 raise more than $200: Ibid., 320n.