ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume has been over two decades in the making, and many people have helped bring it to completion. In 1967 Charles Capen Mc-Laughlin, who was then editing Olmsted’s letters, directed me to a fascinating unfinished manuscript on civilization and the frontier which Olmsted began in California during the 1860s. This generous gesture led to a long and rewarding association. I caught his enthusiasm for the California period of Olmsted’s life, and began preparing the manuscript fragments of Olmsted’s book for publication. In 1971 he invited me to join him and Charles Eliot Beveridge on the Olmsted Papers project, which subsequently was launched with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I reaped the benefits of his original letter search and Harvard doctoral thesis on Olmsted, the most comprehensive biographical study at the time.

Charles Beveridge gave to this volume his unmatched command of the whole range of Olmsted’s letters, essays, lectures, and professional design reports. His knowledge of the design principles that Olmsted enunciated in various writings, and implemented through many design commissions, clarified the significance of Olmsted’s California landscape designs. His introduction to the four California design reports greatly enriches this volume. We relied on his trained eye and visual sense of Olmsted’s landscapes in selecting illustrations and interpreting plans, reports, and photographs. While overseeing the administration of the Olmsted Papers project, he read every draft of every document in this volume. He pruned annotation and wandering arguments, and kept returning us to a close reading of Olmsted’s own words.

[xxii]

Gerard Rauluk has been essential to the preparation of this volume since 1977. His tireless research and persistent curiosity about the mid-nineteenth-century context of Olmsted’s life is responsible for numerous insights into such elusive subjects as Olmsted’s health problems and the operations of the Mariposa Company. He tracked down many obscure literary and historical references in Olmsted’s “The Pioneer Condition and the Drift of Civilization in America,” and ferreted out information about Olmsted’s acquaintances from cemetery and court records, voting registers, and local newspapers. Throughout, his wide reading in European and American history and literature provided background for understanding Olmsted’s ideas and behavior. His attention to the details of scholarly format and his delight in well-written English improved countless drafts of our editorial material.

Carolyn F. Hoffman provided crucial assistance in the final period of preparation of this volume. She kept track of all its diverse elements on the project’s main computer. Her efficiency and grasp of detail allowed us to incorporate numerous revisions and rearrangements. She checked the accuracy of every transcription and citation, and oversaw the production of the volume, a painstaking process involving creating and entering codes for automatic typesetting, ensuring consistency of format of citations, recording the original form of altered text, and producing the index with the NLCINDEX computerized indexing program.

Jane Turner Censer provided an invaluable close reading of the whole volume. David Schuyler advised on the annotation of the Olmsted-Vaux correspondence and especially on the timing of Olmsted’s turn to landscape architecture as a career. Duncan McCollum’s work as archivist of the project made available essential Olmsted documents from repositories all over the country. When the Olmsted Papers project began, James Meisner and Margit Altstadt patiently deciphered Olmsted’s handwriting and typed the texts for this volume. In 1983 the project secured a Wang OIS word processor, and Christine Raheem retranscribed the texts for a computerized format. Sara Ranney helped proofread transcriptions. George McLaughlin provided additional research at the Bancroft Library, as did Kevin Corbitt at the Library of Congress.

The following institutions kindly permitted us to publish documents in their possession: the Library of Congress; the New York Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts Division, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston; the Bancroft Library at the University of California in Berkeley; and the Houghton Library at Harvard University.

For permission to publish visual materials, we wish to thank the Research Library and Museum, Yosemite National Park; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the Library of Congress; the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, Tex.; the Bancroft Library; the Mariners Museum, [xxiii]Newport News, Va.; the New-York Historical Society; the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston; the Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco; the Museum of the City of New York; the San Mateo County Historical Association Museum, San Mateo, Calif.; the Wine Institute, San Francisco; the Garden Library, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.; the Frederick Law Olmsted National Site, Brookline, Mass.; the Gray Herbarium and the Frances Loeb Library of the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the Park-Mc-Cullough House, North Bennington, Vt.; the California Historical Society, San Francisco; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; and the Boston Public Library. We wish to extend special thanks to Laura Wood Roper for her photograph of Calvert Vaux, and to Paul and Alice Elcano for the photograph of their Thomas Hill painting, Yosemite Valley, 1867.

The maps that identify the places Olmsted knew in California during the 1860s were skillfully developed from numerous original sources by Stephen Kraft.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission research staff has been most assiduous in assisting us in locating documents at the National Archives over the entire period of the project. Staff members at many research libraries and historical societies have also aided us in our work. The staff of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress was unfailingly helpful as we returned frequently to consult Olmsted’s original manuscripts. The Joseph Regenstein and John Crerar libraries at the University of Chicago provided us with an extraordinary range of research material; Jean M. Judson and Sandra Roscoe of the Reference Department, and Christopher Winters in the Map Collection, patiently directed us through their holdings. We particularly wish to thank the staffs of the Rare Books & Manuscripts Division at the New York Public Library, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

In California we found help from librarians, historians, and others all along the way. At the University of California in Berkeley, the staff of the Bancroft Library assisted us with their rich collections in California history. Mary Vocelka at the Yosemite National Park Research Library and Museum, Cathleen McNamara at the Mariposa County Historical Society Research Library, and Marion C. Holmes at the San Mateo County Historical Association Museum Library each supplied us with sources unique to their collections. At the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, Marcia Young gave us access to the original minute-book of the Mountain View Cemetery Association. Shirley Sargent generously shared her wide knowledge of Mariposa and Yosemite history. Lesley Emmington Jones, Theodore Osmundsen, and Joseph Engbeck contributed their research on Piedmont Way in Berkeley. Donald H. McLaughlin provided [xxiv]a special tour of the Mariposa Estate and gave us the benefit of his expert knowledge of goldmining. Gunther Barth carefully read the manuscript and alerted us to important nuances of California history. We also appreciate the help we received at the Bank of California, the California Historical Society, the Huntington Library, the California State Library, the California State Archives, the Oakland Public Library, and the Society of California Pioneers.

All over the country people helped us piece together the mosaic of Olmsted’s life and wide acquaintance during the period covered by this volume. Howard Lamar alerted us to the correspondence of Trenor Park and the Carleton Watkins photographs of the Mariposa Estate at the Park-McCullough House in North Bennington, Vt. There, Muriel Cummings Palmer and Joseph A. Cutshall King opened up their invaluable collection for our use. James Otis Post steered us to Olmsted’s private photograph collection at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in Boston. Robert and Marshall Wallach and Hope Wallach Porter in Virginia let us read and copy their grandfather Henry Cleveland Perkins’s correspondence with Olmsted. Ruth Neuendorffer of the Historical Society of the Tarry towns in New York provided unique information on Eliza Hamilton Schuyler. For a balanced overview of Olmsted’s Mariposa years, I turned to Laura Wood Roper’s excellent biography of Olmsted.

The University of Chicago has been home to this volume of the Olmsted Papers over the years. We are especially grateful to Jonathan Kleinbard, Harold Richman, and Robert Rosenthal, who kindly donated office space, thus allowing the main research for the volume to be done at the university’s Regenstein and John Crerar libraries.

Since our first funding in 1972 the American University has been the institutional sponsor of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers. Beginning in 1984 the university provided space for the project’s central office in Washington, D.C. We appreciate its continuing support and wish to thank the many members of the university staff who have provided us assistance. We are pleased to be a part of the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences. The present chairman of the department, Robert Beisner, has provided valuable assistance in formulating several of our grant proposals and, as a member of our advisory board, has reviewed this and other volumes.

The scope of this volume required extended trips for research and collaboration which we could hardly have afforded without the hospitality of good friends: Kevin and Eliza Klose, Michael and Coco Sterner, Mason and Margaret Morfit, Franz and Margaret Oppenheimer, Harry and Sarah Broley, Farwell and Nora Smith, Susan Moon, Sylvia McLaughlin, Michael and Penny Janeway, Newton and Arleyn Levee, Laurence B. Chollet, Ralph and Lora Redford, David and Mary Elise [xxv]Hydinger, Valerie Rauluk, and David Levens and Susan Mackem.

Clear to me, though perhaps indiscernible to the reader, is the hand of my family in this volume. From as early as I can remember, my father, James Otis Post, shared with me his lifelong pleasure in history and letters. My husband, George Ranney, Jr., sustained me through years of research and at key junctures generously volunteered special help. His incisive editing often helped clarify my ideas, and his commitment to planning on many levels afforded a fitting modern vantage point from which to view Olmsted’s achievement. Our children, Sara, Alison, and Benjamin Ranney, grew up with this volume; Olmsted became a thread winding through our lives and travels. They accepted his presence with humor, offered good suggestions, and kept me going with their lively encouragement. For all of her help over the years, I am grateful to Dora Banks.

Major financial support for this volume came from the federal agencies the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided important funding for the whole Olmsted Papers project from 1980 to 1989, including a special research fellowship during 1987–89. This volume benefited at an early stage from a grant to the Olmsted Papers from the Rockefeller Foundation; grants from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation and two important private donations made the final editing process possible. We are grateful to Lawrence W. Towner for his early and timely support and to Nancy Stevenson and Harry Weese for raising public awareness of the project in Chicago.

The Friends of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers, based in California, worked tirelessly to raise money for the preparation of the volume. Our special thanks go to Sylvia C. McLaughlin, the moving force behind the organization, and to Theodore Osmundsen for his leadership. Through the efforts of the Friends of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers, the following foundations supported the California volume: the Columbia Foundation, the Janet and Mortimer Fleishhaker Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Hershey Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Jaquelin Hume Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Spirit of Stockholm Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, and the L. J. and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation. The Friends of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers were also instrumental in obtaining a grant from the Hubbard Educational Trust for the Olmsted Papers as a whole.

We wish to acknowledge with gratitude all those who gave their names, time, and financial assistance through the Friends of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers: Allegheny Conference on Community Development, Alexander Allport, Robert Andrews, Wolcott E. Andrews, Domenico Annese, Walter W. Arensberg, Leslie S. Ayers, Edward B. Ballard, [xxvi]George L. Batchelder, Maggie Baylis, Russell A. Beatty, Richard Bender, Richard Berendzen, Lucy Blake, Paul Brooks, Paschall Campbell, William G. Carnes, Central Park Conservancy, David Childs, Elizabeth Church, Adrian A. Colley, Lester Collins, John R. Cook, Jr., Ron Coplen, Council of Fellows (American Society of Landscape Architects), Chapell Cranmer, Galen Crantz, Francis H. Dean, John Dewitt, Carleton T. Dodge, Garrett Eckbo, Spencer P. Ellis, Morgan Evans, Joseph H. Engbeck, Jr., William Flournoy, James F. Fondren, Raymond L. Freeman, Stephen P. Gill, Harold Gilliam, Vernon L. Goodin, Nanine Hilliard Greene, Ronald Green, Daniel P. Gregory, Eileen R. Growald, Alan Gussow, Elaine Halnan, Donald Harris, Harry G. Haskell, Jr., Alfred E. Heller, Clarence Heller, Elinor Heller, John Hoffnagle, Homestake Mining Company, Joseph C. Houghteling, Gretchen S. Hull, Mary Lee Jefferds, Lesley Emmington Jones, Carol R. Johnson, T. J. Kent, Jr., Elizabeth E. Kingsley, L. W. (Bill) Lane, Aaron Levine, Philip H. Lewis, Jr., Joseph H. Linesch, Mary R. Lowrey, Michael and Alexandra Marston, Jane McKenzie, Judith Mears, Sally N. Mein, Amy Meyer, Mark Minnis, Charlotte Morrison, William Penn Mott, Jr., Judith B. Nadai, Darwina L. Neal, Nancy Olmsted, Margaret Owings, Raymond E. Page, Mary E. Pike, Robert Sigmund Reich, John N. Roberts, Martin J. Rosen, William M. Roth, Royston, Hanamoto, Alley and Abey, Hideo Sasaki, Sasaki Associates, Inc., Ann Satterthwaite, Marian Albright Schenck, Gene Schrickel, Jr., John O. Simonds, Wallace Stegner, Nancy Stevenson, Edward D. Stone, Jr., David Talbot, Patricia B. Tobey, F. Jerome Tone IV, Francis Violich, Elizabeth Farrar Wecter, William J. Whalen, Robert F. White, Walton A. Wickett, George Wickstead, Susan Ellis Williams, Conrad L. Wirth, Donald Wolbrink, and Douglas Wolfe