A Stranger in A Strange Land: Frederick Olmsted in Texas

I’m well into writing the manuscript for my new novel, which is about Texas in the 1854-1855—pre-Civil War.  For a guy who has lived his whole life in Texas, I’m learning a lot about how things were right around where we live, but way back then-- over 120 years ago.

Life was hard in 1855 for almost everyone compared to our lives today. There were few safety nets to protect people from the unexpected, or the “expected, but dreaded.” Things like the sudden deaths of infants and toddlers and the deaths of women during childbirth, debilitating work injuries to men, a worn-down wife’s unwanted pregnancy resulting in a tenth child to feed, a bad harvest, and on the forward fringe of American civilization-- burned homes and stolen horses during Indian raids. Hard became harsh very quickly, or simply skipped harsh, and went right to tragic, like tortured, murdered settlers and women raped, then taken away by marauding Indians.

I just bought a book first published in 1857 that is giving me a fresh period view of early Texas from someone who was “on the outside looking in.”

The book is My Journeys In Texas, a travelogue written by Frederick Law Olmsted, who was a correspondent for a New York City magazine. Olmsted and his brother traveled for months through Texas by horseback in 1855.  Olmsted was also a well-known successful landscape architect who designed New York City’s Central Park and the Boston Commons.

Here’s a photo of Frederick Law Olmsted.

Olmsted frankly didn’t like Texas, or Texans, very much, except for the German immigrants who settled New Braunfels, a town between Austin and San Antonio in what is now Central Texas. He approved of their industriousness, their sense of order, their manner of building sturdy rock and timber homes, the neatly painted and decorated interiors of their small houses, and probably, their beer.

Conversely, Olmsted found the Anglo-settlers of East Texas to be lazy, poor, and almost universally uncurious and non-intellectual. He related story after story of stopping at isolated cabins along the roads through East Texas and being aghast at the poverty, laziness, and lack of concern of the folks from whom his party bought food.

His view of the Mexican residents of San Antonio is similar, with cultural differences acknowledged. He did comment, though, that he liked tamales and tortillas, and enjoyed the international flavor of San Antonio itself.

Olmsted wrote at length about slavery as he encountered white slave owners and black slaves in his travels. He was a staunch New England abolitionist, who was vocal in his moral opposition to slavery, as well as having a growing practical opposition.

He observed that a paid laborer in the north did four times the work of a slave in the south.  He wrote that the economics of the south revolved around some 8,000 large plantations whose owners dominated everything. He opined that slavery robbed needed jobs from white laborers, who consequently were bereft of any economic well-being, relegated to a fragile existence in dire poverty on unproductive small farms.

He also noted that every man he met in Texas carried Colt revolvers, as he also did. And he made the point that most men with whom he visited during the evenings in hotels and taverns had come to Texas fleeing some personal troubles left behind them in other southern states, troubles that were usually legal.

Yes, he was pretty darned critical. But Olmsted sure had a turn of phrase. In fact, I’m testing a new title for my book, using one of Frederick Olmsted’s descriptions of Texas, as he found our Lone Star state in 1855: A Different Country Entirely.

And, Yes, I've already written Olmsted into my book's plot. He is just too interesting a guy to leave out, and the timing of his travels through Texas coincide with my story-line perfectly.

Finally, here’s a modern photo of a young friend of mine with his two daughters in front of the Alamo. He’s a reenactor wearing 1830’s clothing, and even if he is portraying a militiaman twenty years earlier than my story, I think he projects a fine impression of a rough-and-tumble Anglo Texas settler. And his two girls are cutey-pies.