Frederick Law Ousted, born on April 26, 1822, at Hartford, Conn., was the eldest son of John Olmsted, a prosperous merchant of that city, where the family had been living since the settlement of the place in 1636, having come from County Essex, England.

He went to a succession of schools, and was fitted for Yale in 1836, but on account of a weakness of the eyes gave up college, and spent most of the next three years nominally studying engineering with a Rev. Mr. Barton, of Andover, Mass., who was a surveyor as well as a minister, but a large part of his time was spent in the White Mountains.

During his youth and early manhood, he frequently accompanied his father and stepmother on long driving trips through many parts of New England, acquiring a keen power of observation, a warm appreciation of the varieties of New England landscape, and a familiar acquaintance with the conditions and habits of the whole community. The family spent part of nearly every summer at Guilford or some other point on the shore, and he became very fond of cruising in the waters of the Sound in a small sailboat.

In the autumn of 1840, he entered the employ of Benkard & Hutton, dry-goods importers, in New York, and remained in this uncongenial occupation till the spring of 1842, after which for about a year he attended lectures and did a certain amount of reading at Yale, where his younger brother, John Hull Olmsted, was then at college.