ABSTRACT
S ach em 's H ead was a spiny serpent of a peninsula pushing its rocky ledges by twists and turns into the blue Sound below the old town of Guilford, which lay thirteen miles east of New Haven, accessible to Yale men as a good fishing and hunting area. It had bad roadways and scattered acres of oats and hay struggling to separate themselves from rocks and swamp. In fall brilliant tufts of maples separated fields and fringed miniature bays. It was an area as difficult to farm as when seventeenth century settlers first tried to plow its resistant acres, as isolated in 1847, when Frederick Olmsted deter mined to live there and farm a small acreage. His father very willingly pur chased the farm, and Frederick pledged by note to repay his father.
