Denison Olmsted (1791 - 1859)

Born 18 Jun 1791 in East Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Julia (Mason) Olmsted — married 24 Aug 1831 in New York County, New York, United States

Descendants

Died 13 May 1859 at age 67 in New Haven, Connecticut, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Walt Steesy [send private message]

Biography

Dennison Olmsted was born 18 Jun 1791 in East Hartford, Hartford County, Connecticut, the youngest son of Nathaniel and Eunice Kingsbury. ^[1]

He married Eliza Allyn on 1 June 1818 and they had eight children:

1. Francis Allyn, b. 1819, d. 1844
2. John Howard, b. 1820, d. 1846
3. Cornelia A., b. 1821, d. 1869; m. Melancthon Seymour
4. Alexander Fisher, b. 1822, d. 1853
5. Denison, b. 1824, d. 1846
6. Eliza, b. 1825, d. 1826
7. Lucius Duncan, b. 1827, d. 1862; m/1 Jessie Sherman; m/2 Hannah Merriam

After Eliza died in 1829 he married Julia Mason in 1831. They had one daughter, Julia.

Dennison died in New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut and is buried there between his two wives in the family lot in the Grove Street Cemetery. ^[2]

Brief Biography

Astronomer. Born in East Hartford, Connecticut, he was a professor who was credited with giving birth to meteor science after the Leonid meteor shower over North America, in 1833. He graduated from Yale University in 1813, was college tutor (1815-17) and was appointed the Chairman of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina in 1818. In 1825, he became professor of physics at Yale and a professor of meteorology in 1830. He and his associate Elias Loomis, were also the first American investigators to observe Halley's Comet in 1835. He died at age 67 in New Haven, Connecticut.^[3]

Major Biographies

The 1912 Olmsted genealogy devoted a page and a half to Denison and included the engraved illustration of him that has been reproduced in many other locations including the FAG entry above.

Wikipedia has a short biography, though more detailed that the one on FAG above, of Professor Olmsted and includes the engraved image from the 1912 Olmsted genealogy.^[4]

Sources

1. ↑ The Hosmer Heritage: Ancestors and Descendants of the Emigrant Thomas Hosmer by Ronald Longaker Roberts. South Lake Tahoe, California, 1984; pg. 299
2. ↑ Find A Grave: Memorial #11862 has photos.
3. ↑ Posted on the memorial cited above.
4. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denison_Olmsted

• Olmste(a)d files of Walt Steesy
• Olmsted, Henry King, M.D. Genealogy of the Olmsted Family in America (A.T. De La Mare, New York, 1912); pgs. 44, 72-73 includes engraved photo.

Free space page "The Night the Stars Fell": https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Space:The_Night_the_Stars_Fell_-_1833%2C_USA&public=1

Acknowledgments

WikiTree profile Olmsted-130 created through the import of OsmerBook.ged on May 20, 2012 by Tami Osmer who later orphaned it.

Profile adopted by Walt Steesy on 26 September 2018.