What’s the connection between this first picture …
… and this second picture below?
The answer is found in this third picture below!
This man is Frederick Law Olmsted. He is renowned as the landscape architect of Central Park in NYC. My great grandfather, Archibald Van Orden, visited Central Park, including the sheep’s meadow shown above, when he was garrisoned in NY.
Mr. Olmsted’s greatest service to his nation, however, came during the Civil War, when he was appointed head of the US Sanitary Commission. This precursor of The Red Cross outfitted Hospital Ships, such as the one shown above, to care for Union wounded, near Virginia battlefields in the Peninsula Campaign of 1862.
After Archie was seriously wounded by a minie ball shot into his thigh during the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, he was a beneficiary of this brilliance by F.L. Olmsted. Archie was carried with other wounded soldiers on a horse cart until he reached Harrison’s Landing on the Pamunkey River in VA.
Moved onto the anchored ship “Euterpe”, surgeons removed the minie ball from Archie’s leg, staunched the bleeding, and bandaged the wound. Though he would walk with a limp for the rest of his years, his life was saved by the doctors. Next Archie was transferred to the transport ship “Louisiana”, which would continue his recovery care, while carrying him towards Maryland on his way back home.
On the Steamer “Louisiana” Archie met an “angel of the waterways,” a nurse who would become one of the most important people in his life — and in mine. Their story and their destinies will be told in full when my book is finally published.
The Assassin's Assassin 