CHAPTER IV

FARMING

Following his taste for outdoor life, and with the approval of his father, Frederick Olmsted determined to become a farmer at the time his brother was determining on a doctor’s career if his health permitted. It was through their friend Frederick Kingsbury that Frederick Olmsted was directed to the farm of Mr. Joseph Welton in Waterbury, where he began the serious study of agriculture in May, 1845.[6]

In June of that year he wrote to Charles Brace from Waterbury:

For myself I have every reason to be satisfied with my prospects. I grow more contented or more fond of my business every day,--really, for a man that has any inclination for agriculture, the occupation is very interesting, and if you look closely you will be surprised to see how much honorable attention and investigation is being connected with it. The _Cultivator_ has now five regular monthly European correspondents. Scientific men of highest distinction are there devoting their undivided attention to its advance; and I think here, the coming year will show a remarkable progress.

A day or two later Frederick wrote his brother John:

For my part I believe that our farmers are, and have cause to be, the most contented men in the world; and for the matter of profit, it is sufficient to know that they live and bring up their families in what they consider comfortable circumstances, with the usual system and management. I should think by the use of the proper tools and machinery which a man of intelligence and information could procure and invent, at least half of the most disagreeable and hard labor of our old-fashioned farmers might be dispensed with to advantage. But I doubt whether taste for its peculiar pleasures, or inclination or ability for its manual exertions, will make you a farmer. If you could, however,--and of this you are the best judge,--become interested in its operations for a year or two, and connect yourself with its present rapid advance as an honorable and learned profession, you would not only find it a sufficient means of support, but an agreeable and healthful pursuit.

From notices in farm journals, such as the _Cultivator_, Frederick Olmsted was led to select the farm of Mr. George Geddes called “Fairmount,” near Owego, N. Y., as the place to pursue further his apprenticeship in agriculture, since Mr. Geddes[7] had been awarded first prize for the best-ordered farm in New York State.

On March 19, 1846, Frederick wrote to his brother from Hartford:

I shall start I think directly after the election, I presume going to Albany first, and then on west to Syracuse, etc., with letters from Mr. Norton and Tucker of the _Cultivator_. Father has obtained 15 new subscribers for the _Cultivator_ here.[8] Perhaps, and I should prefer to, come per New Haven and N. Y. and first with Professor O’s letter to Owego. Please do say what you think about it. I should like to make you a visit again before I go for good and I shall probably spend next winter on [the] farm.

In June he wrote to Frederick Kingsbury from “Fairmount”:

I want to make myself useful in the world, to make others happy, to help to advance the condition of Society, and hasten the preparation for the Millennium, as well as other things too numerous to mention.

Now, how shall I prepare myself to exercise the greatest and best influence in the situation of life I am likely to be placed in. You know perhaps as well as I what that is--I suppose it’s not very great stretch of ambition to anticipate my being a Country Squire in Old Connecticut in the course of fifteen years. I should like to help then as far as I could [to foster] in the popular mind generosity, charity, taste and etc.,--independence of thought of voting and of acting. The education of the _ignoble vulgus_ ought to be much improved and extended.

The Agricultural Interest greatly preponderates in number and wealth in the state, but perhaps has the least influence in Legislation. Lawyers whose sense of right and truth is blunted by profession--the sense of law--and traffickers who value themselves as they can make their own interest appear--whether truly or not--the interest of another, make our laws, make public opinion, because they have had their intellectual faculties sharpened by practice and education. Now the people-farmers and mechanics--the producing classes that the rest live on--want to think and judge for themselves, to cultivate the intellectual.

There is happily a reminiscence written by Mrs. Frederick Law Olmsted in 1920[9] of her husband’s establishment on his own farm at Staten Island and of the meeting of the Olmsted and Perkins families.

“In the summer of 1847 Mr. John Olmsted of Hartford, Conn., was staying, with his family, at the Sachem’s Head Hotel where he met Mr. John Bowne of New York. Mr. Bowne’s wife was the daughter of Dr. Akerly late of Staten Island, whose family were desirous of selling the farm left by Dr. Akerly. Mr. Olmsted and his son Frederick, being dissatisfied with the prospect for success in the small farm at Guilford, bought not long before for Frederick, accepted Mr. Bowne’s invitation to go to Staten Island, South Side, and inspect the Akerly farm. Their impression was so favorable that Mr. Olmsted bought the place, 130 acres, paying for it $12,000.00 and took possession the following winter. The farm stretched from the Main Road to the shore of Prince’s Bay about a mile in length.

“Leaving the main road one entered a very pretty wood of trees of fair size,--oaks, maples, sweet and sour gum, sassafras, holly, etc. After about a quarter of a mile one came out upon the cleared land on the top of a small rise. The soil was heavy red clay, very suitable for wheat, etc., yielding up to 40 bushels per acre. There was a sort of plateau from which the land sloped gently down for about quarter of a mile and then an almost level stretch went to the bank six feet above the beach. From all this part of the farm there was a fine view of Prince’s Bay looking across to Sandy Hook (slightly foreshortened), Navesink, and the New Jersey Hills stretching away to the southward. There were no trees on this level with the exception of one tall old pear tree at the foot of which were found from time to time the bones of the slaves who had been buried there....

“The farm commanded a view of all shipping outward or inward bound....

“The house, standing at the foot of the slope, was built of rough stone plastered over with lime, and had been, until shortly before Dr. Akerly’s death, only a story and a half high. He had, in order to accommodate his growing family of grand-children built on in wood a full story and a half, giving nine bed chambers. Outside the junction of the stone and wood was disguised by the roof of an all round piazza. Inside the effect was rather odd for the stone wall a foot and a half thick came up nearly three feet and on top of it were built closets convenient, but queer. Downstairs was an entrance hall of 12 × 16 feet going through from east to west and on each side a 16 ft. square room with tolerably high ceiling, windows with deep seats looking east and in one room a window looking south either side of the fireplace.

“On the south end, the ground sloped so that there was an easy entrance for barrows to the cellar, large and well lighted, and used as a dairy. There was a small outbuilding north of the house where was found a breast plate engraved ‘The King’s American Dragoon’s,’ laid away on a beam in what had evidently been a stable.

“The first time I ever saw Frederick was in February of 1848 when he came over to Holly Hill to tell Grandpa Perkins the news of the flight of Louis Philippe from Paris, just received in New York.

“Frederick was then settled on his farm with his Aunt Maria Olmsted as housekeeper and provider for two jolly green freshly imported Irish maids and three or four farm laborers. We soon called on her and the families were very friendly. At that time Grandpa occupied Holly Hill Farm and Uncle Frank was living in South Brooklyn. John Hull Olmsted had just graduated and had come to New York to Dr. Willard Parker’s office to study medicine. He came to the farm for week ends and holidays bringing Charles Brace generally and sometimes Frederick Kingsbury. By the winter time I had grown so intimate with the Olmsteds that it was arranged that I should pass Christmas at Hartford on my way back from a visit in Boston, which I did.

“In June his father, step-mother and half sisters Mary and Bertha and young half brother Albert came to pass a long season, bringing with them a fine span of horses and an open carriage, the regular farm outfit being Old Black subject to blind staggers and not too speedy at best and an old Rockaway.

“Frederick was at this time 26 years of age full of life and fun. He threw himself into farming with enthusiasm, introduced system and order to his men, expecting for one thing that at knocking off time every tool used should be returned to its appointed place and that every ‘chore’ should be done at the hour fixed, the foreman to report progress before going in to supper. He engaged in planting and dealing in fruit-trees, pears principally, which he imported from France. All was done in a simple inexpensive way, using the old buildings on the place and practicing rigid economy. He interested himself in the County Agricultural Society and soon became an active member in company with Wm. H. Vanderbilt who was at the time a farmer at New Dorp Lane.

“Frederick had a very pretty talent for caricatures, not of a grotesque kind but full of quiet humor.... He was fond of long discussions on moral points as when, if ever, it is allowable to depart from a direct statement of fact, etc., etc. He was perhaps over fond of arguments to be pleasing to women. Whimsies had no charm for him. _Sartor Resartus_ and _Modern Painters_ were our text books.

“Aunt Maria was a dear kind devoted woman of fifty, plain as a pikestaff and devoid of vanity.

“Mr. Olmsted, the father, had just retired from business with a modest competence. He was the kindest and most indulgent of fathers,--a man with a strict sense of justice and of duty, exacting toward himself rather than toward others. His wife was a Puritan, a model of order and system, most efficient as an organizer and full of interest in Nature and Man.

“The family continued to make its summer home at the farm until the end of the summer of 1853, six years.”

It was in 1849-1850 that Frederick considered going into the nursery business on a small scale. He wrote to his father on March 14:

I have been to Flushing and got the trees. Parsons’ bill is $258. and he desires especially if it cannot be paid before the 1st of May that he may have paper that he can use--your note. I have been so unfortunate in my sales that I concluded not to take so many by 300 trees as I had intended. Parsons being very willing, he will probably sell the trees from 5 to 10 per cent more than my price. Mr. Field strongly recommends me to purchase for myself in France. Thinks I might find ready sale for some thousand on Staten Island within a few years, at 100 per cent over cost of importing them. I called at the Packet offices this morning but could not get anything reliable as to freight. As near as I can guess the bulk of 100 trees (small dwarf pear) of ordinary goods would not be over $1.00. S---- gave me to understand it would be near $10. I think he lied. But even at that I could import them one year younger than these I have of Parsons for but little more than one half what I pay him and at about one quarter what Mr. Field paid for his.

Later in his venture he wrote to Fred Kingsbury:

SOUTH SIDE, Dec. 21, 1850.

There is a good deal of building this winter.

My trees are to arrive soon, so I cannot go to Connecticut at present. More of them than I had calculated the man could supply, about 5,000 pears. The nurseryman makes me a present of 200 samples of his shrubs and trees. They are also lower than they had been offered and promise very fine. You have a nurseryman in Waterbury. I wish you would ask him if he does not want some pears on pear or quince stock, of the latter I have the finest lot ever imported and will sell them lower than the regular nurserymen. I shall have a few popular shrubs and trees of other sorts. How would a few hundred go at auction in Waterbury? I have a lot of (pot plants) cedar of Lebanon.

In this letter, he adds:

We are likely to have a Plank Road upon the island, contract is offered at exactly the sum per mile I estimated in an article upon the subject in the _Staten Isler_ last spring. Our society does well, I have near $20. worth of premiums.

The society to which he refers, and of which he was Corresponding Secretary, was the Richmond County Agricultural Society. Early in 1850 the Board of Managers issued an “Appeal to the Citizens of Staten Island.” In this we read:

“How is this, Fellow Citizens? Is the very best method of Farming which can be adopted universally practiced among us? Is it by any one of us? Is Agriculture, as a science, sufficiently understood in our community? Can no luxuries be added to our orchards--no new beauty bloom in our gardens? Are there no incongruities or inconveniences in our Domestic Architecture? Is the want of refined Rural Taste nowhere observable on our island? Are we quite satisfied with our _Roads_--confident that our breeds of cattle are unsurpassed, and that no improvements can be added to the implements of our Husbandry, that we should neglect or refuse to combine our knowledge and influence in these matters? May we not want a little of the patriotic sentiment, the neighborly feeling, the cordial good understanding among ourselves, that would be promoted by a free interchange of our thoughts, opinions and observations, and by manifesting a unity of purpose with regard to these subjects of common interest?”

Frederick recorded his progress in the nursery business in a letter to his father Nov. 6, 1851:

I have sold near $100. worth of trees besides those sent to Terry. Received order for a small lot to be delivered at Hartford at wholesale prices from Sol. Porter, Porter Place, Banker. I referred him to my letter but told him that on the supposition that he meant to increase his order I would send the trees, putting them on board Hartford boat at $50. rate, if I did not hear from him this week to the contrary. He ordered also some peach trees, which I shall have to get, I don’t know where. Next day another order, “2d, not for Porter Place,” for 20 more pears. I have had two calls from men that wanted a large number shade trees--evergreens--and other fruit trees, that I could not supply--and could not get the ordering of. One of them[10] is engaged in laying out grounds for Aspinwalls, Livingston and others at Clifton and told me he should have bought a good many hundred trees if I had had such as he wanted. He took 31 pears at 60 cts. for Livingston and O’Conner. Townsend called & took 24, Bunker, 15 and others of that sort, making the best sort of nest eggs for the business.

There is a remark in a letter of 1890 from Mr. Olmsted to Dr. Peter Collier, Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva, N. Y., which shows how important he considered this period of his career: “I began life as a farmer, and although for forty years I have had no time to give to agricultural affairs, I still feel myself to belong to the farming community, and that all else that I am has grown from the agricultural trunk.”

FOOTNOTES:

[6] This was a period of intelligent interest in scientific agriculture, and there was an outburst of farm journals, beginning in the late thirties. See the list in Bailey’s _Cyclopedia of American Agriculture_, 1909, Vol. IV.

[7] “Mr. Geddes’ father was prominent in building the Erie Canal and he was himself an engineer, as well as a farmer, and interested in politics, so that Mr. Olmsted had plenty of stimulus to think while he worked, and in the evening to discuss a wide range of subjects with an intelligent man.” From Biographical Introduction by F. L. Olmsted, Jr., to _Seaboard Slave States_, edition of 1904.

[8] Mr. John Olmsted’s firm in Hartford was a regularly accredited agency for the _Cultivator_ and its name appears on the title-page.

[9] Mrs. Olmsted died April 23, 1921, at the age of ninety-one.

[10] Evidently one of the popular “landscape gardeners” to which reference is made in Part III.

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