JESSE S. OLMSTED--Husband of Azubah Forgerson In writing the biographies of pioneers and prominent men of Sandusky county, a link would be missing and the chain incomplete should we omit a sketch of the life and services of the gentleman whose family and personal history we give in the following narrative: Jesse S. Olmsted was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut, December 24, 1792. When he was quite young his father removed to Albany, New York, where young Olmsted was placed for awhile under the instruction of Dr. Knott. When quite a young man he was employed as bookkeeper in a large mercantile establishment. Here he became a thorough accountant, and took his first lessons in mercantile transactions.
In the fall of 1817 Mr. Olmsted, in company with his brother George G., brought from Albany, New York, to Lower Sandusky, the first stock of goods that rose to the dignity of a mercantile transaction. It consisted of a general assortment of dry goods, groceries, hardware, crockery, liquors, and wines, and amounted, upon the invoices at Albany, to the handsome sum of twenty-seven thousand dollars. This firm of brothers also brought with them carpenters to build a store, and coopers to make barrels to be used at the fisheries here, which trade was then, and has since been, very considerable. The workmen, eleven in all, together with the nails, glass, and the hardware necessary for their intended building, were transported from Albany to Buffalo by land, thence by water to this place. The pine lumber was brought from Buffalo by water. The amount paid for transportation on this stock of merchandise was four thousand four hundred dollars. Immediately upon their arrival they commenced the erection of their store. It was the second frame structure built here. It was located near Doncysons brewery. Its dimensions were sixty by thirty feet, two stories high, with dormer-windows and projecting beams, with pulley blocks attached in front for raising goods. It presented a front of sixty feet towards the river, and the lower story was divided into two apartments—one a salesroom or store, and the other a warehouse. This was considered a mammoth building, and for many years it was a kind of commercial emporium, the stock of good in it being greater than in any other between Detroit and Cleveland, and Urbana and the lake. Mr. Olmsteds first trade was chiefly with the Indians of the Wyandot Seneca, and Ottawa tribes.
Soon after Mr. Olmsted and his brother opened business, they received in trade and shipped in one season twenty thousand muskrat skins, worth twenty-five cents each; eight thousand coon skins, worth fifty cents each two thousand deer skins, at fifty cents; one hundred and fifty otter skins, at five dollars each; and two hundred bear skins, at five dollars each. In 1820 the Olmsted Brothers sent the first pork from this place eastward. It consisted of one hundred and fifty barrels, and was marketed at Montreal. The cost here was two thousand dollars for the lot, but it was sold for considerable less. About the year 1825 the firm dissolved, and Mr. Jesse S. Olmsted went into business at Tymochtee; but in two or three years he returned to Lower Sandusky, where he remained the rest of his life. The first wheat shipped East from this point a lot of six hundred bushels ;was sent by Mr. Olmsted in the year 1830. It cost him forty cents per bushel in Lower Sandusky, and sold in Buffalo for sixty cents. Transportation was then so high that this advance of twenty cents per bushel was consumed in expenses. He made nothing, therefore, by the operation.
On the 1st of January, 1821, he was married to Miss Azuba Forgerson of Lower Sandusky, though a native of Orange county, New York. The marriage license on this occasion was the second issued after the organization of the county. The family comprised three children, Dorcas Ann, the first daughter, born September 12, 1824, died August 25, 1826; now Mrs. Charles Foster, of Fostoria, Ohio, and Charles now partner in the large mercantile firm of Foster, Olmsted Co., of the same place.
Mr. Olmsted died in Fremont on the 9th of November, 1860, at the age of sixty-eight. He was always held in high esteem for his integrity and discernment, and he held for a time the position of county treasurer; also that of associate judge of the court of common pleas; all the duties of which offices, as well as those of other official stations, he performed to the entire satisfaction of the people. Humbug found no victim, hollow, heartless formality no advocate in him. For the unfortunate he always had an open and helping hand, and in early times here many in distress were relieved by his generous donations. As an officer, he was prompt and reliable; as a business man, he was ever strictly honest. His goods had only one price, and his book entries told the truth. Fair profits and unflinching frankness and honesty in all transactions were the cardinal principles of his life, and when newly-arrived merchants came into the place and adopted the usual tactics of cheapening some leading articles of merchandise, with the price of which the people were familiar, to attract custom, and then make up the loss on articles of which the customer was ignorant of the value, Judge Olmsteds indignation knew no bounds. He denounced such a system of merchandising as knavery and robbery. The fact that Judge Olmsted was the pioneer merchant of the place, that he came to Lower Sandusky when the whole country was a sickly wilderness, that he was an eyewitness to the birth of the town and of every step of progress in its early history that he had seen the country a wilderness inhabited by wild beasts and still wilder men transformed into a peaceful garden of civilization and beauty, all conspire to rank him as the leading pioneer man and merchant of Lower Sandusky, alias Fremont.
In a lecture at Birchard Hall delivered in February, 1860, Homer Everett, esq., who had been many years a clerk for Judge Olmsted, and a member of his family, the judge being then alive and present at the meeting, thus alluded to his marriage: Forty years a faithful, loving, married pair! For forty years the same familiar step upon the threshold of a happy home to meet warm comforts and a loving welcome; forty years hand in hand along lifes road, eye to eye reading the inmost thoughts. and loving more and more; faithful, true, confiding, with heart to heart through all the trials and changes of mortal life from youth to age. I have been an inmate of that home, and claim the right to say there is not in our town a more interesting and beautiful social spectacle than the every day life of this aged pair! Surely such are blest.
Judge Olmsted departed this life on the 9th of November, 1860. Mrs. Olmsted still survives, and is now in her eighty-seventh year, is still vigorous, and retains her mental faculties in a remarkable degree. Azuba Olmsted was born in Orange county, State of New York, March, 1795 Her parents were Richard Forgerson and Julia (Davis) Forgerson. Azuba may haave come to Lower Sandusky with Aaron Forgerson, her father's brother, in the year 1817; but her paarents may have stayed in NY.
In the fall of 1817 Mr. Olmsted, in company with his brother George G., brought from Albany, New York, to Lower Sandusky, the first stock of goods that rose to the dignity of a mercantile transaction. It consisted of a general assortment of dry goods, groceries, hardware, crockery, liquors, and wines, and amounted, upon the invoices at Albany, to the handsome sum of twenty-seven thousand dollars. This firm of brothers also brought with them carpenters to build a store, and coopers to make barrels to be used at the fisheries here, which trade was then, and has since been, very considerable. The workmen, eleven in all, together with the nails, glass, and the hardware necessary for their intended building, were transported from Albany to Buffalo by land, thence by water to this place. The pine lumber was brought from Buffalo by water. The amount paid for transportation on this stock of merchandise was four thousand four hundred dollars. Immediately upon their arrival they commenced the erection of their store. It was the second frame structure built here. It was located near Doncysons brewery. Its dimensions were sixty by thirty feet, two stories high, with dormer-windows and projecting beams, with pulley blocks attached in front for raising goods. It presented a front of sixty feet towards the river, and the lower story was divided into two apartments—one a salesroom or store, and the other a warehouse. This was considered a mammoth building, and for many years it was a kind of commercial emporium, the stock of good in it being greater than in any other between Detroit and Cleveland, and Urbana and the lake. Mr. Olmsteds first trade was chiefly with the Indians of the Wyandot Seneca, and Ottawa tribes.
Soon after Mr. Olmsted and his brother opened business, they received in trade and shipped in one season twenty thousand muskrat skins, worth twenty-five cents each; eight thousand coon skins, worth fifty cents each two thousand deer skins, at fifty cents; one hundred and fifty otter skins, at five dollars each; and two hundred bear skins, at five dollars each. In 1820 the Olmsted Brothers sent the first pork from this place eastward. It consisted of one hundred and fifty barrels, and was marketed at Montreal. The cost here was two thousand dollars for the lot, but it was sold for considerable less. About the year 1825 the firm dissolved, and Mr. Jesse S. Olmsted went into business at Tymochtee; but in two or three years he returned to Lower Sandusky, where he remained the rest of his life. The first wheat shipped East from this point a lot of six hundred bushels ;was sent by Mr. Olmsted in the year 1830. It cost him forty cents per bushel in Lower Sandusky, and sold in Buffalo for sixty cents. Transportation was then so high that this advance of twenty cents per bushel was consumed in expenses. He made nothing, therefore, by the operation.
On the 1st of January, 1821, he was married to Miss Azuba Forgerson of Lower Sandusky, though a native of Orange county, New York. The marriage license on this occasion was the second issued after the organization of the county. The family comprised three children, Dorcas Ann, the first daughter, born September 12, 1824, died August 25, 1826; now Mrs. Charles Foster, of Fostoria, Ohio, and Charles now partner in the large mercantile firm of Foster, Olmsted Co., of the same place.
Mr. Olmsted died in Fremont on the 9th of November, 1860, at the age of sixty-eight. He was always held in high esteem for his integrity and discernment, and he held for a time the position of county treasurer; also that of associate judge of the court of common pleas; all the duties of which offices, as well as those of other official stations, he performed to the entire satisfaction of the people. Humbug found no victim, hollow, heartless formality no advocate in him. For the unfortunate he always had an open and helping hand, and in early times here many in distress were relieved by his generous donations. As an officer, he was prompt and reliable; as a business man, he was ever strictly honest. His goods had only one price, and his book entries told the truth. Fair profits and unflinching frankness and honesty in all transactions were the cardinal principles of his life, and when newly-arrived merchants came into the place and adopted the usual tactics of cheapening some leading articles of merchandise, with the price of which the people were familiar, to attract custom, and then make up the loss on articles of which the customer was ignorant of the value, Judge Olmsteds indignation knew no bounds. He denounced such a system of merchandising as knavery and robbery. The fact that Judge Olmsted was the pioneer merchant of the place, that he came to Lower Sandusky when the whole country was a sickly wilderness, that he was an eyewitness to the birth of the town and of every step of progress in its early history that he had seen the country a wilderness inhabited by wild beasts and still wilder men transformed into a peaceful garden of civilization and beauty, all conspire to rank him as the leading pioneer man and merchant of Lower Sandusky, alias Fremont.
In a lecture at Birchard Hall delivered in February, 1860, Homer Everett, esq., who had been many years a clerk for Judge Olmsted, and a member of his family, the judge being then alive and present at the meeting, thus alluded to his marriage: Forty years a faithful, loving, married pair! For forty years the same familiar step upon the threshold of a happy home to meet warm comforts and a loving welcome; forty years hand in hand along lifes road, eye to eye reading the inmost thoughts. and loving more and more; faithful, true, confiding, with heart to heart through all the trials and changes of mortal life from youth to age. I have been an inmate of that home, and claim the right to say there is not in our town a more interesting and beautiful social spectacle than the every day life of this aged pair! Surely such are blest.
Judge Olmsted departed this life on the 9th of November, 1860. Mrs. Olmsted still survives, and is now in her eighty-seventh year, is still vigorous, and retains her mental faculties in a remarkable degree. Azuba Olmsted was born in Orange county, State of New York, March, 1795 Her parents were Richard Forgerson and Julia (Davis) Forgerson. Azuba may haave come to Lower Sandusky with Aaron Forgerson, her father's brother, in the year 1817; but her paarents may have stayed in NY.
JESSE S. OLMSTED--Husband of Azubah Forgerson In writing the biographies of pioneers and prominent men of Sandusky county, a link would be missing and the chain incomplete should we omit a sketch of the life and services of the gentleman whose family and personal history we give in the following narrative: Jesse S. Olmsted was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut, December 24, 1792. When he was quite young his father removed to Albany, New York, where young Olmsted was placed for awhile under the instruction of Dr. Knott. When quite a young man he was employed as bookkeeper in a large mercantile establishment. Here he became a thorough accountant, and took his first lessons in mercantile transactions.
In the fall of 1817 Mr. Olmsted, in company with his brother George G., brought from Albany, New York, to Lower Sandusky, the first stock of goods that rose to the dignity of a mercantile transaction. It consisted of a general assortment of dry goods, groceries, hardware, crockery, liquors, and wines, and amounted, upon the invoices at Albany, to the handsome sum of twenty-seven thousand dollars. This firm of brothers also brought with them carpenters to build a store, and coopers to make barrels to be used at the fisheries here, which trade was then, and has since been, very considerable. The workmen, eleven in all, together with the nails, glass, and the hardware necessary for their intended building, were transported from Albany to Buffalo by land, thence by water to this place. The pine lumber was brought from Buffalo by water. The amount paid for transportation on this stock of merchandise was four thousand four hundred dollars. Immediately upon their arrival they commenced the erection of their store. It was the second frame structure built here. It was located near Doncysons brewery. Its dimensions were sixty by thirty feet, two stories high, with dormer-windows and projecting beams, with pulley blocks attached in front for raising goods. It presented a front of sixty feet towards the river, and the lower story was divided into two apartments—one a salesroom or store, and the other a warehouse. This was considered a mammoth building, and for many years it was a kind of commercial emporium, the stock of good in it being greater than in any other between Detroit and Cleveland, and Urbana and the lake. Mr. Olmsteds first trade was chiefly with the Indians of the Wyandot Seneca, and Ottawa tribes.
Soon after Mr. Olmsted and his brother opened business, they received in trade and shipped in one season twenty thousand muskrat skins, worth twenty-five cents each; eight thousand coon skins, worth fifty cents each two thousand deer skins, at fifty cents; one hundred and fifty otter skins, at five dollars each; and two hundred bear skins, at five dollars each. In 1820 the Olmsted Brothers sent the first pork from this place eastward. It consisted of one hundred and fifty barrels, and was marketed at Montreal. The cost here was two thousand dollars for the lot, but it was sold for considerable less. About the year 1825 the firm dissolved, and Mr. Jesse S. Olmsted went into business at Tymochtee; but in two or three years he returned to Lower Sandusky, where he remained the rest of his life. The first wheat shipped East from this point a lot of six hundred bushels ;was sent by Mr. Olmsted in the year 1830. It cost him forty cents per bushel in Lower Sandusky, and sold in Buffalo for sixty cents. Transportation was then so high that this advance of twenty cents per bushel was consumed in expenses. He made nothing, therefore, by the operation.
On the 1st of January, 1821, he was married to Miss Azuba Forgerson of Lower Sandusky, though a native of Orange county, New York. The marriage license on this occasion was the second issued after the organization of the county. The family comprised three children, Dorcas Ann, the first daughter, born September 12, 1824, died August 25, 1826; now Mrs. Charles Foster, of Fostoria, Ohio, and Charles now partner in the large mercantile firm of Foster, Olmsted Co., of the same place.
Mr. Olmsted died in Fremont on the 9th of November, 1860, at the age of sixty-eight. He was always held in high esteem for his integrity and discernment, and he held for a time the position of county treasurer; also that of associate judge of the court of common pleas; all the duties of which offices, as well as those of other official stations, he performed to the entire satisfaction of the people. Humbug found no victim, hollow, heartless formality no advocate in him. For the unfortunate he always had an open and helping hand, and in early times here many in distress were relieved by his generous donations. As an officer, he was prompt and reliable; as a business man, he was ever strictly honest. His goods had only one price, and his book entries told the truth. Fair profits and unflinching frankness and honesty in all transactions were the cardinal principles of his life, and when newly-arrived merchants came into the place and adopted the usual tactics of cheapening some leading articles of merchandise, with the price of which the people were familiar, to attract custom, and then make up the loss on articles of which the customer was ignorant of the value, Judge Olmsteds indignation knew no bounds. He denounced such a system of merchandising as knavery and robbery. The fact that Judge Olmsted was the pioneer merchant of the place, that he came to Lower Sandusky when the whole country was a sickly wilderness, that he was an eyewitness to the birth of the town and of every step of progress in its early history that he had seen the country a wilderness inhabited by wild beasts and still wilder men transformed into a peaceful garden of civilization and beauty, all conspire to rank him as the leading pioneer man and merchant of Lower Sandusky, alias Fremont.
In a lecture at Birchard Hall delivered in February, 1860, Homer Everett, esq., who had been many years a clerk for Judge Olmsted, and a member of his family, the judge being then alive and present at the meeting, thus alluded to his marriage: Forty years a faithful, loving, married pair! For forty years the same familiar step upon the threshold of a happy home to meet warm comforts and a loving welcome; forty years hand in hand along lifes road, eye to eye reading the inmost thoughts. and loving more and more; faithful, true, confiding, with heart to heart through all the trials and changes of mortal life from youth to age. I have been an inmate of that home, and claim the right to say there is not in our town a more interesting and beautiful social spectacle than the every day life of this aged pair! Surely such are blest.
Judge Olmsted departed this life on the 9th of November, 1860. Mrs. Olmsted still survives, and is now in her eighty-seventh year, is still vigorous, and retains her mental faculties in a remarkable degree. Azuba Olmsted was born in Orange county, State of New York, March, 1795 Her parents were Richard Forgerson and Julia (Davis) Forgerson. Azuba may haave come to Lower Sandusky with Aaron Forgerson, her father's brother, in the year 1817; but her paarents may have stayed in NY.
In the fall of 1817 Mr. Olmsted, in company with his brother George G., brought from Albany, New York, to Lower Sandusky, the first stock of goods that rose to the dignity of a mercantile transaction. It consisted of a general assortment of dry goods, groceries, hardware, crockery, liquors, and wines, and amounted, upon the invoices at Albany, to the handsome sum of twenty-seven thousand dollars. This firm of brothers also brought with them carpenters to build a store, and coopers to make barrels to be used at the fisheries here, which trade was then, and has since been, very considerable. The workmen, eleven in all, together with the nails, glass, and the hardware necessary for their intended building, were transported from Albany to Buffalo by land, thence by water to this place. The pine lumber was brought from Buffalo by water. The amount paid for transportation on this stock of merchandise was four thousand four hundred dollars. Immediately upon their arrival they commenced the erection of their store. It was the second frame structure built here. It was located near Doncysons brewery. Its dimensions were sixty by thirty feet, two stories high, with dormer-windows and projecting beams, with pulley blocks attached in front for raising goods. It presented a front of sixty feet towards the river, and the lower story was divided into two apartments—one a salesroom or store, and the other a warehouse. This was considered a mammoth building, and for many years it was a kind of commercial emporium, the stock of good in it being greater than in any other between Detroit and Cleveland, and Urbana and the lake. Mr. Olmsteds first trade was chiefly with the Indians of the Wyandot Seneca, and Ottawa tribes.
Soon after Mr. Olmsted and his brother opened business, they received in trade and shipped in one season twenty thousand muskrat skins, worth twenty-five cents each; eight thousand coon skins, worth fifty cents each two thousand deer skins, at fifty cents; one hundred and fifty otter skins, at five dollars each; and two hundred bear skins, at five dollars each. In 1820 the Olmsted Brothers sent the first pork from this place eastward. It consisted of one hundred and fifty barrels, and was marketed at Montreal. The cost here was two thousand dollars for the lot, but it was sold for considerable less. About the year 1825 the firm dissolved, and Mr. Jesse S. Olmsted went into business at Tymochtee; but in two or three years he returned to Lower Sandusky, where he remained the rest of his life. The first wheat shipped East from this point a lot of six hundred bushels ;was sent by Mr. Olmsted in the year 1830. It cost him forty cents per bushel in Lower Sandusky, and sold in Buffalo for sixty cents. Transportation was then so high that this advance of twenty cents per bushel was consumed in expenses. He made nothing, therefore, by the operation.
On the 1st of January, 1821, he was married to Miss Azuba Forgerson of Lower Sandusky, though a native of Orange county, New York. The marriage license on this occasion was the second issued after the organization of the county. The family comprised three children, Dorcas Ann, the first daughter, born September 12, 1824, died August 25, 1826; now Mrs. Charles Foster, of Fostoria, Ohio, and Charles now partner in the large mercantile firm of Foster, Olmsted Co., of the same place.
Mr. Olmsted died in Fremont on the 9th of November, 1860, at the age of sixty-eight. He was always held in high esteem for his integrity and discernment, and he held for a time the position of county treasurer; also that of associate judge of the court of common pleas; all the duties of which offices, as well as those of other official stations, he performed to the entire satisfaction of the people. Humbug found no victim, hollow, heartless formality no advocate in him. For the unfortunate he always had an open and helping hand, and in early times here many in distress were relieved by his generous donations. As an officer, he was prompt and reliable; as a business man, he was ever strictly honest. His goods had only one price, and his book entries told the truth. Fair profits and unflinching frankness and honesty in all transactions were the cardinal principles of his life, and when newly-arrived merchants came into the place and adopted the usual tactics of cheapening some leading articles of merchandise, with the price of which the people were familiar, to attract custom, and then make up the loss on articles of which the customer was ignorant of the value, Judge Olmsteds indignation knew no bounds. He denounced such a system of merchandising as knavery and robbery. The fact that Judge Olmsted was the pioneer merchant of the place, that he came to Lower Sandusky when the whole country was a sickly wilderness, that he was an eyewitness to the birth of the town and of every step of progress in its early history that he had seen the country a wilderness inhabited by wild beasts and still wilder men transformed into a peaceful garden of civilization and beauty, all conspire to rank him as the leading pioneer man and merchant of Lower Sandusky, alias Fremont.
In a lecture at Birchard Hall delivered in February, 1860, Homer Everett, esq., who had been many years a clerk for Judge Olmsted, and a member of his family, the judge being then alive and present at the meeting, thus alluded to his marriage: Forty years a faithful, loving, married pair! For forty years the same familiar step upon the threshold of a happy home to meet warm comforts and a loving welcome; forty years hand in hand along lifes road, eye to eye reading the inmost thoughts. and loving more and more; faithful, true, confiding, with heart to heart through all the trials and changes of mortal life from youth to age. I have been an inmate of that home, and claim the right to say there is not in our town a more interesting and beautiful social spectacle than the every day life of this aged pair! Surely such are blest.
Judge Olmsted departed this life on the 9th of November, 1860. Mrs. Olmsted still survives, and is now in her eighty-seventh year, is still vigorous, and retains her mental faculties in a remarkable degree. Azuba Olmsted was born in Orange county, State of New York, March, 1795 Her parents were Richard Forgerson and Julia (Davis) Forgerson. Azuba may haave come to Lower Sandusky with Aaron Forgerson, her father's brother, in the year 1817; but her paarents may have stayed in NY.
Family Members
Advertisement
Explore more
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
