In 1632, this original Olmsted set out from Essex, England, aboard the ship Lyon, bound for America. He had buried his wife and lost four of his seven children. Anxious for a fresh start in the New World, he settled first in the colony of Massachusetts. But in 1636, he joined an expedition led by the Reverend Thomas Hooker that headed south on foot to found a new community. The group wound up in the Connecticut Valley and settled in a place they named Hertford, after a town in England. (It was later Americanized to “Hartford.”) As part of a land distribution, James Olmsted was given 70 acres
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