110 Biographical Sketch of Prof. Olmsted. 
labors, but, more fully, of his successful career as an instructor, 
and of his well-balanced and exemplary character as a man an 
a christian in all the relations of life. It will be our purpose, 
— in this sketch, to contemplate Prof. Olmsted, chiefly, 
tea cher and cultivater of science. 
be born in East Hartford on the 18th of June, 1791,— 
the fourth child of Nathaniel Olmsted, a respectable farmer, who 
was a descendant of James Olmsted, one of the first settlers of 
_the colony of Connecticut. His mother, a daughter of Denison 
Kingsbury of Andover, Ct., was a woman of most exemplary 
christian character, and to her (his father having died when he 
was about a year old) he was indebted for that excellent religious 
training, the fruits of which were exhibited in all his subsequent © 
life, and for which she found herself rewarded, even to extreme 
old age, by a depth of affection and veneration on his part such 
as few mothers can inspire. 
In Farmington, to which town his mother removed, on her 
second marriage, when he was about nine years old, he attended 
a district school for several winters, having his home for that 
ourpose in the family of Gov. Treadwell. ‘This excellent man, 
‘becoming interested in the boy for his amiability, intelligence, 
and other promising traits, took pains to instruct him privately 
during the long evenings, especially in arithmetic, which was 
not then.taught in the common schools; and so befriended him, 
in this and other ways, that in after life Prof. Olmsted ever cher- 
ished his memory with the deepest affection and gratitude, and 
at a later period, embodied his estimate of his benefactor in an 
elaborate memoir, published in the American Quarterly Reg- 
ister for 18438. 
At the age = sixteen, when he had been for some time em- 
ployed in a country store, in which a son of Gov. Treadwell 
was one of the partners, he made up his mind to obtain a liberal 
education; and after pursuing his hemmed studies, first at 
- excellent school kept by James Morris at Litchfield South 
arms, an 
Imsted 
London, talag charge of the “ Union School,” so allel 
private institution for boys. In 1815 he was a — ~ <a tu- 
torship in Yale College, and while filling this olen 
the study of in a class instructed by Dr. Dwight os 
. 
