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Abstract
While Frederick Law Olmsted’s reputation rests almost as much on his authorship of studies including the Cotton Kingdom as it does for his work on landscapes including New York’s Central Park, a neglected file in the archival papers of Olmsted Associates, his sons’ design firm, suggests that it was Olmsted’s alleged role in a fabulous pirate story that truly captured the attention and imagination of the general public, along with that of business historians and other specialists. This paper examines the reception history of A Notable Lawsuit (1898), which purports to tell the tale of how the Astor family stole a fortune from the Olmsted family in the form of the ‘veritable’ pirate Captain William Kidd’s buried treasure. The designation of his pirate stories as ‘veritable’ is but the first clue that must be deciphered in weighing the documentary evidence incorporated into and dissimulated by Head’s text. The perils and the pleasures of treating A Notable Lawsuit as a test case in establishing the credibility of historical fact and fiction—as defined by authors such as Herman Melville and Thomas Carlyle—is the survival of the file preserving the range and kind of perplexities faced by readers of the tale.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Franklin H. Head, A Notable Lawsuit (Chicago: Privately Printed, 1898), p. 21. The story was first read before the Chicago Literary Club 13 January 1896. Frederick William Gookin, The Chicago Literary Club: A History of Its First Fifty Years (Chicago: Chicago Literary Club, 1926), p. 259.
2. Ibid., p. 6.
3. John Keats to George and Tom Keats, Hampstead, 22 December 1817, in Richard Monckton Milnes, Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats, vol. 1 (London: Edward Moxon, 1848), pp. 93–94.
4. Samuel McChord Crothers, ‘The Confession of a Lover of Romance’, The Atlantic Monthly, 80/478 (August 1897), p. 281.
5. See Samuel McChord Crothers ‘A Literary Clinic’, The Atlantic Monthly, 118/3 (September 1916), pp. 291–301.
6. Herman Melville, Redburn: His First Voyage (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849), p. 20.
7. Ibid., p. 79.
8. Ibid., p. 136. See also Wyn Kelly, ‘Melville’s Cain’, American Literature, 55/1, 1983, p. 25.
9. Frederick Law Olmsted, ‘Public Parks and the Enlargements of Towns’, Journal of Social Science Containing the Transactions of the American Association, 3, 1871, p. 17.
10. See Frederick Law Olmsted, ‘The People’s Park at Birkenhead, near Liverpool’, The Horticulturist, 6/5, 1851, pp. 224–228.
11. Nancy Glazener, Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. Literary Institution, 1850–1910 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 148.
12. Edwin Percy Whipple, ‘Mr. Hardhack on the Sensational in Literature and Life’, The Atlantic Monthly, 26/154 (August 1870), p. 196.
13. Ibid.
14. Crothers, ‘The Confession of a Lover of Romance’, p. 282.
15. Ibid.
16. Frederick Law Olmsted eventually came into possession of Gideon Olmsted’s ‘A Jurnnorl of An Intended voige From Nulondon to Gaudeloope In the Sloope Seayflour’, its orthography irregular enough to suggest the use of a pirate’s cypher. The journal chronicled the six-month period of imprisonment and mutiny which precipitated Gideon’s prize claim and consequent thirty-year lawsuit. The document was later incorporated into the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers at the Library of Congress, themselves, according to their jealous guardian, the ‘accumulated treasure of his lifetime, his professional files, and his correspondence with Washington Irving’, et. alii. Helen Duprey Bullock, ‘The Personal and Professional Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted’, Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions, 6/1, 1948, p. 14.
17. Frederick Law Olmsted, ‘Autobiographical Fragment B1’, in Charles Capen McLaughlin (ed.), The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, vol. 1: The Formative Years, 1822–1852 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), p. 113.
18. John Charles Olmsted to Frederic Law Olmsted, 2 September 1895. Frederick Law Olmsted Papers, Library of Congress (hereinafter FLOP).
19. Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (London: Cassell & Company, 1883), p. 51.
20. Louis F. Middlebrook, Captain Gideon Olmsted: Connecticut Privateersman, Revolutionary War (Salem, MA: Newcomb & Gauss, 1933), p. 49.
21. Hampton L. Carson, ‘The Case of the Sloop Active’, The Pennsylvania Magazine, 16/4, 1892, p. 386.
22. Ibid. See also Gerard W. Gawalt and Charles W. Kreidler (eds.), The Journal of Gideon Olmsted: Adventures of a Sea Captain During the American Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1978); Ruth M. Kelly, The Olmsted Case: Privateers, Property, and Politics in Pennsylvania, 1778–1810 (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 2005).
23. Middlebrook, Captain Gideon Olmsted, p. 1.
24. Ibid., p. 2.
25. Ibid.
26. See Frederick Law Olmsted, ‘Hints Aidful to Elementary Self-Education in Design in the Common Fields of Landscape Gardening Proper’, in Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and Theodora Kimball (eds.), Frederick Law Olmsted Landscape Architect: 1822–1903 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922), p. 59.
27. Melville, Moby-Dick, p. 535.
28. James Fenimore Cooper, The Prairie: A Tale (1827); Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies (1835). The central reference on this imagery is Robert Thacker, The Great Prairie Fact and Literary Imagination (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1989).
29. William Francis Butler, The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Low & Searle, 1872), p. 199.
30. Olmsted to William James, 8 July 1891, in David Schuyer and Gregory Kaliss (eds.), The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: Volume IX, The Last Great Projects, 1890–1895 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), p. 361.
31. Frederick Law Olmsted, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (New York: George P. Putnam, 1852), p. 230.
32. Frederick Law Olmsted to Frederick, fall 1848, cited in, Frederick Law Olmsted Landscape Architect: 1822–1903, p. 86.
33. Middlebrook, Captain Gideon Olmsted, p. vii.
34. Ibid., pp. vii-viii.
35. ‘Sunckquasson Indian Treaty’, in Charles William Manwaring (ed.), A Digest of Early Connecticut Probate Records, Vol. 1 L Hartford District, 1635–1700 (Hartford: R. S. Peck, 1904), p. 65.
36. Middlebrook, p. ix.
37. Thomas Carlyle to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 12 August 1834, in The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834–1872, vol. 1 (Boston: Ticknor and Co., 1883), p. 25.
38. Ibid.
39. Middlebrook, Captain Gideon Olmsted, p. 7.
40. Beverly Taylor, ‘Carlyle’s Historical Imagination: Untrue Facts and Unfactual Truths’, Victorian Newsletter, 61 (Spring 1982), p. 31.
41. Thomas Carlyle, ‘The Diamond Necklace’, Fraser’s Magazine, 15/85 (January 1837), p. 6.
42. Herman Melville, ‘A Thought on Book-Binding’, The Literary World, 163 (16 March 1850), p. 277; F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), p. 384.
43. Katie McGettigan, Herman Melville: Modernity and the Material Text (Durham: NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2017), p. 54.
44. Letter from Herman Melville (Pittsfield, MA, February 20, 1852), in Memorial of James Fenimore Cooper (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1852), p. 30.
45. Melville, ‘A Thought on Book-Binding’, p. 276.
46. Carlyle, ‘The Diamond Necklace’, p. 6.
47. ‘The Book Trade’, The Merchant’s Magazine, and Commercial Review, 6/6 (December 1841), p. 522.
48. Frederick Law Olmsted, ‘A Voice from the Sea’, The American Review, n.s., 8/6 (December 1851), p. 525.
49. ‘Notices of New Works. White Jacket; or The World in a Man-of-War’, The Southern Literary Messenger, 16/4 (April 1850), p. 250.
50. Frederick Law Olmsted to John Hull Olmsted, Whampoa Reach, 28 September 1843, in The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, vol. 1: The Formative Years, p. 160.
51. Ibid.
52. Melville, Moby-Dick, p. 133.
53. See Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 34.
54. Frederick Law Olmsted to John Hull Olmsted, Whampoa Reach, 28 September 1843, FLOP.
55. Charles Moore, Daniel H. Burnham: Architect, Planner of Cities, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), p. 74.
56. Frederick Law Olmsted to John Hull Olmsted, Whampoa Reach, 28 September 1843.
57. See Kurt C. Schlichting, Waterfront Manhattan: From Henry Hudson to the High Line (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), pp. 24–29.
58. Document No. 39. Board of Aldermen, February 2, 1835, ‘The Joint Committee on Wharves and Public Lands and Places […] Report for Building a Bulkhead, and filling up between Pike slip and Rutgers Slip’, in Documents of the Board of Aldermen, of the City of New-York, vol. 1 (New York, 1835), p. 295.
59. Third Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, January 1860 (New York: Wm. Bryant, 1860), p. 71.
60. Melville, Moby-Dick, p. 2.
61. Hester Blum, The View from the Masthead: Maritime Imagination and Antebellum American Sea (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), p. 123.
62. Melville, Redburn, p. 20.
63. ‘Burning of The Henry Clay’, The Knickerbocker, 40/4 (October 1852), p. 342.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. Benson J. Lossing, The Hudson, from the Wilderness to the Sea (New York: Virtue and Yorston, 1866), pp. 272–273.
67. See Charles A. Huguenin, ‘The Kidd Salvage Project in the Hudson River’, New York Folklore Quarterly, 15/1, 1959, pp. 192–214.
68. Mark Shell, Money, and Language: Literary and Philosophic Economics from the Medieval to the Modern Era (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 7.
69. Lossing, The Hudson, p. 273.
70. ’William Kidd. The Fragrant Memory of the Pirate Captain’, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 2 September 1877, p. 3.
71. Munhaden Frederick Law Olmsted, ‘Sea Manure’, Boston Cultivator 9/11 (13 March 1847), p. 82; T. K., ‘On Making and Saving Manure’, The Cultivator 3/1 (January 1855), p. 17.
72. ‘William Kidd. The Fragrant Memory of the Pirate Captain’.
73. Josiah Seymour Currey, Chicago: Its History and Its Builders, a Century of Marvelous Growth, vol. 4 (S. J. Clarke, 1912), p. 382.
74. Half-Century’s Progress of the City of Chicago. The City’s Leading Manufacturers and Merchants. Part I. History of Illinois (Chicago: International Publishing Company, 1887), p. 87.
75. Chicago Historical Society 1857–1907: Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Its Incorporation (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1907), p. 182.
76. Gookin, The Chicago Literary Club, p. 114.
77. Henry J. Buxton to Marion Olmsted, Chester, PA, 20 July 1921, FLOP. See also Carolyn Olmsted and Margaret Olmsted, Penobscot Bay Treasures (Portland, ME: Falmouth Publishing House, 1950).
78. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to Henry J. Buxton (9 September 1921), FLOP.
79. Frederick Olmsted, Jr. to Elizabeth Head Gates, 24 October 1921, FLOP.
80. Frederick Olmsted, Jr. to Mrs. Merrill Edward Gates (Brookline, 24 October 1921), FLOP.
81. Elizabeth Head Gates to Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Washington, D.C., 29 October 29 1921, FLOP.
82. Ibid.
83. Charles S. Nutter, Hymn Studies: An Illustrated and Annotated Edition of the Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1884), p. 371.
84. Head, ‘The Legends of Jekyl Island’, The New England Magazine, ns., 8/3 (May 1893), p. 396; republished as Franklin H. Head, The Legends of Jekyl Island (Chicago: Privately Printed, 1899).
85. Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems, vol. 1 (Bristol: Felix Farley, 1749), p. 34.
86. Head, ‘The Legends of Jekyl Island’, p. 396.
87. Nutter, Hymn Studies, p. 371; Charles S. Nutter, Nashville Christian Advocate, 3 March 1894, p. 6.
88. ‘One of Wesley’s Hymns’, Portland Oregonian, 20 August 1894, p. 4.
89. See Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1966]), pp. 44–45.
90. Gervas Holmes, ‘Interleavings from My Hymn-Book’, The Canadian Methodist Magazine, 12/5 (November 1880), p. 373.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid., p. 374.
93. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to Elizabeth Head Gates, Brookline, 24 October 1921, FLOP.
94. James W. Lee, Naphtali Luccock, James Main Dixon, The Illustrated History of Methodism (New York: The Methodist Magazine Publishing Co., 1900), p. 327.
95. Charles S. Nutter and Wilbur F. Tillett, The Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1911), p. 392. Among the elect was John Telford, The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A. (London: Wesleyan Methodist Book Room 1900), p. 245.
96. Meric Casubon, Credulity and Incredulity in Things Natural, Civil, and Divine (London: T. Garthwait, 1668), p. 172.
97. Charles F. Dole, ‘The Ethics of Speculation’, The Atlantic Monthly, 100/6 (December 1907), p. 819.
98. Nutter and Tillett, The Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church, p. 392.
99. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to Marion Olmsted, Brookline, 9 September 1921, FLOP.
100. William H. Crosby to Frederick Law Olmsted, Buffalo, NY, 3 February 1921, FLOP.
101. Norman Scott Brie Gras to Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Cambridge, 11 October 1927, FLOP.
102. Roy F. Dibble to Fredrick Law Olmstead [sic], 9 March 1923, FLOP.
103. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., ‘Commentary upon A Notable Lawsuit’, Forum and Century, 86 (July 1931), p. 64.
104. On Frederick Law Olmsted’s conception of design, see Edward Eigen, ‘Claiming Landscape as Architecture’, Studies in the History of Gardens & Design Landscapes, 34, 2014, pp. 226–247.
105. Ibid.
106. Thomas Wilson, ‘Portraits of Columbus’, Report of the Committee on Awards of the World’s Columbian Commission. Special Reports upon Special Subjects of Groups, vol. 1 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1901), p. 189.
107. John Boyd Thacher, Christopher Columbus: His Life, His Work, His Remains, vol. 3 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), p. 82.
108. Ibid., p. 83.
109. Chauncey M. Depew, ‘The Columbian Oration, Delivered at the Dedicatory Ceremonies of the World’s Fair at Chicago, 21 October 1892’, in Chauncey M. Depew (ed.), Life and Later Speeches (New York: Cassell Publishing, 1894), p. 6.
110. Samuel Eliot Morison, Christopher Columbus: Mariner (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1955), pp. 128–129.
111. Depew, ‘The Columbian Oration’, p. 20.
112. Daniel H. Burnham and Francis Davis Millet, World’s Columbian Exposition: The Book of the Builders (Chicago: Columbian Memorial Publication Society, 1894), p. 5.
113. Frederick Law Olmsted, ‘Memorandum as to What Is to Be Aimed at in the Plantings of the Lagoon District of the Chicago Exposition, as Proposed March 1891’, in David Schuyler and Gregory Kaliss (eds.), The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Vol. 9: The Last Great Projects, 1890–195 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), p. 322.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid.
116. See Víctor Concas y Palau, La Nao Histórica Santa Maria en la Celebración del IV Centenario del Descubrimiento de América (Madrid: Imprenta Alemana, 1914).
117. Washington Irving, Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, vol. 3 (New York: G. & C. Carvill, 1828), p. 378. On the Great Migration and its aftermath see Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956).
118. Fannie M. Olmsted, ‘Family Heirlooms: The Olmsted Christening Blanket’, in Henry King Olmsted and Rev. George K. Ward (eds.), Genealogy of the Olmsted Family in America: Embracing the Descendants of James and Richard Olmsted and Covering a Period of Nearly Three Centuries, 1632–1912 (New York: A. T. De La Mare, 1912).
119. See Edward Eigen, ‘Cotton Mather Engraved and Ungraved’, in K. Michael Hays and Andrew Holder (eds.), Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech (Cambridge: Harvard University Press/Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2022), p. 2; see also Jan Stievermann, ‘Writing “To Conquer All Things”: Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana and the Quandary of Copia’, Early American Literature, 39/2, 2004, pp. 263–297; on the ‘Puritan Baroque’ see Austin Warren, ‘Grandfather Mather and His Wonder Book’, The Sewanee Review, 72/1, 1964, p. 112.
120. See Kevin Dawson, ‘History Below the Waterline: Enslaved Salvage Divers Harvesting Seaports’ Hinter-Seas in the Early Modern Atlantic’, International Review of Social History, 64, 2019, p. 54.
121. Diary of Cotton Mather: 1681–1708, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Seventh Series, 7, 1921, p. 331. Steven J. J. Pitt, ‘Cotton Mather and Boston’s “Seafaring Tribe”’, The New England Quarterly, 85/2, 2012, p. 223.
122. Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 388.
123. Entry for 10 December 1724. Diary of Cotton Mather 1709–1724. Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, ser. 7, 8, 1912, p. 777.
124. Roper, FLO, pp. 18–19.
125. Washington Irving to Pierre Paris Irving, Paris, 29 March 1825, in Pierre M. Irving, The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, vol. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862), p. 233.
126. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., ‘The Beginning of Central Park: A Fragment of Autobiography by the Late Frederick Law Olmsted’, Landscape Architecture, 2/4 (July 1912), p. 159.
127. Head, A Notable Lawsuit, p. 8.
128. Evert Augustus Duyckinck, ‘Melville’s Moby Dick; or, The Whale. Second Notice’, The Literary World, 251 (22 November 1851), p. 404.
129. Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852), p. 346.
130. Edgar A. Poe, ‘The Gold-Bug’, Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper (28 June 1843), p. 1.
131. Head, A Notable Lawsuit, p. 6.
132. Ibid, p. 7.
133. Catalogue des Actes de François I, vol. 2: 1 January 1531–31 Décembre 1534 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1888), p. 634.
134. Head, A Notable Lawsuit, p. 10.
135. Ibid., p. 11.
136. Ibid., p. 11.
137. Ibid., p. 12.
138. Ibid., p. 6.
139. Ibid., p. 6.
140. Reverend John Higginson, Revolution in New England Justified (1691), cited in Ian Saxine, Properties of Empire: Indians, Colonists, and Land Speculators on the New England Frontier (New York: New York University Press, 2019), p. 40.
141. Head, A Notable Lawsuit, p. 5.
142. Diedrich Knickerbocker [Washington Irving], A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, vol. 1 (New York: Inskeep & Bradford, 1809), p. 45.
143. Head, A Notable Lawsuit, pp. 36–37.
144. Ben C. Clough, The American Imagination at Work: Tall Tales and Folk Tales (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), p. 102.
145. Olmsted, Jr., ‘Commentary upon A Notable Lawsuit’, p. 64.
146. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to Ellery Sedgwick (23 March 1931), FLOP.
147. ‘Did John Jacob Astor Get His Start in Life with a Lift from Captain Kidd?’ Public Ledger, 2 July 1922.
148. ‘Captain Kidd and the Astor Fortune. A Remarkable Lawsuit, Summarized by Franklin H. Head’, Forum and Century, 86 (July 1931), p. 56.
149. ‘Editor’s Note’, Forum and Century, 86 (July 1931), p. 64.
150. Olmsted, Jr. ‘Commentary upon A Notable Lawsuit’, p. 64.
151. Duncan McDuffie to Olmsted Brothers, Berkeley, 16 August 1912, FLOP.
152. James Frederick Dawson to Duncan McDuffie, Berkeley, 22 August 1912, FLOP.
153. See Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of High-Class Residential Property (Baltimore, 1918).
154. Charles H. Cheney, ‘Progress in Architectural Control’, in Architectural Control of Private Property (National Conference on City Planning 1927), p. 24; ‘Westgate Park Company. Declaration of Restrictions and Covenants Affecting the Property Known as St Francis Wood in San Francisco’ (1912).
155. Duncan McDuffie, ‘City Planning in Berkeley’, Berkeley Civic Bulletin, 4/5 (15 March 1916), p. 116.
156. Ibid.
157. Ibid., p. 106.
158. See Marc A. Weiss, ‘Urban Land Developers and the Origins of Zoning Laws: The Case of Berkeley’, Berkeley Planning Journal, 3/1, 1986, p. 13.
159. Duncan McDuffie to James Frederick Dawson, San Francisco, 26 July 1922, FLOP.
160. W. H. Auden, ‘1 September 1939’, The New Republic (18 October 1939), p. 55.
161. Duncan McDuffie to Frederick Law Olmsted Jr, Berkeley, 6 January 1940, FLOP.
162. Ibid.
163. Ibid.
164. Earnest Elmo Calkins, ‘The Truth About Advertising’, The Atlantic Monthly, 137/5 (May 1926), p. 671.
165. William E. Woodward, Bunk (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1923), p. 251.
166. Olmsted to Duncan and Jean McDuffie, 15 December 1939, FLOP.
167. W. Stewart Woodfill to Stella D. Obst, 11 May 1949, FLOP.
168. Stella D. Obst to W. Stewart Woodfill, 9 May 1949, FLOP.
169. Stella D. Obst to W. Stewart Woodfill, 23 June 1949, FLOP.
170. W. Stewart Woodfill to Stella D. Obst, 28 June 1949, FLOP.
171. Olmsted, Jr. ‘Commentary upon A Notable Lawsuit’, p. 64.