The Other Side of the Family

Anne's mother, Elizabeth Olmsted, as a teenager

The Olmsted Family is not a difficult one about which to find information!
by Charlie Leck

A few years ago I had a wonderful time spending the better part of 8 or 9 months researching the Wakefield side of my wife's family. It was exciting to dig in and come up with surprising information. All that work ended up in a book that I wrote for the family. I called it The Wakefield Pioneers.

Now I'm looking more deeply into the Olmsted side of her family -- her mother's side -- and the abundance of information available is shocking. And, what a story. My concentration will be far different this time. Since so much material is already available and staggering amounts of ancestral data has been previously published, I'll just work on information about the last few generations of the family.

The most fun this time seems to be working with the photographs. There are hundreds of them and most of them shot by exceptional professionals. Though they're old and often damaged, the wonders of PhotoShop help me put them back together when needed.

Let me just show you some examples this morning. It will explain how I'm spending my time right now and why I'm occasionally ignorning my blog.

A 1920 photograph of my wife's mother as a little girl with her father, mother and big brother.

A 1932 photograph of my wife's mother the year before her marriage to Lyman E. Wakefield, Jr.

Robert Groves Olmsted, brother of my wife's mother, in 1936.

Louise MacCracken Olmsted on the day of her 1938 wedding to Robert Groves Olmsted.

George Olmsted Wakefield, born to my wife's mother and father in 1937, died in 1940 at the age of 3. His death lies at the heart of the story of Elizabeth Olmsted Wakefield.

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