Genealogy of the Olmsted family in America : embracing the ...

Seventh Generation 73
term, and lodking forward, Just before his disease attacked him, to instructions
during the summer. He had intended, for a considerable time before
his death, to resign his Professorship in the year 1861, when he should have
reached the age of seventy. But God's ways are not our ways. The tranquil
shade of the evening of life, that harbor from care and toil, where the old
man of intellectual resources and Christian hopes can look forward and backward
without disturbance, was not allotted to him. He thought of rest on
earth, as the aged Christian may; but God did better things for him—he
gave him rest in Heaven.
" His family affections were delightful, and, united with his sense of
duty, made him an exemplary son, husband, father, and kinsman. His
children revered without fearing him; they were trained to exercise their
powers of thinking, and he was thus within the house their chief teacher.
Their characters rewarded his efforts; but alas, much more than the usual
amount of affliction came upon him from a chastening God.
" Between the years 1844 and 1852, four sons, graduates of Yale College,
blameless and exemplary in Christian life, giving promise of usefulness,
were snatched away by consumption, two of them in 1846 in which same year
also his saintly mother, at the age of nearly ninety, fell asleep in Christ. His
eldest son, Francis Allyn, found it necessary, soon after graduation in 1839,
to go upon a voyage in quest of health. He visited the Southern seas, and on
his return published a small volume on what he had seen, especially on the
Sandwich Islands. But his voyage was of no permanent use. He died
not long after receiving the degree of doctor of medicine, in 1844. The second
son, John Howard, was kept from College for some years by ill health, so that
he received his degree after his younger brothers, in 1845. He died but a few
months after taking his degree, in January, 1846, at Jacksonville, in Florida,
whither his commencing illness had carried him, and was laid by the side of
Francis. Two of the brothers, Denison and Alexander Fisher, were members
of the same class of 1844, and both appear as orators on the list of appointments
for Commencement. Denison, second to none in the hopes with which
he inspired his friends, and having passed through college without strain
upon his constitution, seemed to have a career of eminence before him as a
natural philosopher, when he, too, in 1846, was placed by the side of his
brothers. The feeblest of them all, Fisher, with great care, prolonged his
life until 1853. He had repaired to a southern climate and taught chemistry
in the University of Alabama. Returning to New Haven he engaged in chem-
ical studies in the analytical laboratory, and published an introduction to his
science; but the malady only delayed its visit, and his monument records
that death again desolated this family in 1853. But Prof. Olmsted, some
time before these successive strokes fell on him, had known what the cup of
sorrow was. In 1829 his wife died, and the husband, with five little children
between the ages of five and ten, followed her body to the tomb."
1st marriage: 1481, Francis Allyn (M. D.); b. July 14, 1819; d. July 19,
1844; grad. Yale, 1839; Doctor's Degree, 1844; author of " Incidents of a
Whaling Voyage," etc., 1841. 1482, John Howard; b. Sept. 8, 1820; d.
June 17, 1846; grad. Yale, 1845. 1483, Cornelia A. +. 1484, Alexander
Fisher; b. Dec. 20, 1822; d. May 5, 1853; grad. Yale, 1844. 1485, Denison;
b. Feb. 16, 1824; d. Aug. 2, 1846; grad. Yale, 1844. 1486, Eleza; b. June
1825; d. Oct. 16, 1826. 1487, Lucius Duncan +. 2d marriage: 1488,
Julia Mason; b. Aug. 15, 1832; d. Dec. 11, 1880.