ABSTRACT
The name given to the child, Frederick Law Olmsted, was a large and impressive one for so small a body. He did not belong to the village. In fact, the inhabitants looked at him somewhat askance. He belonged to a family in Hartford. His father, John Olmsted, a prosperous dry goods merchant, had sent the child away from a comfortable house and a busy city to this country place to be taught by the schoolmaster-minister, who took a few boys into his house in an informal sort of way. This was to be the pattern of Frederick's childhood, a going away from home each year to one or another “school" in primitive circumstances in the less-peopled parts of Connecticut. He did not care much for the lessons given him. He spent all the time he could wandering the woods.
