I am about to go way off topic, but:
Two sides of my family left England (Ilkeston and Stratford-upon-Avon) and settled in Massachusetts/Connecticut (Bridgeport/Stratford area) fairly early on so my tribe have roots in MA/CT. One of my great-great-grand uncles donated land that ended up being known as Beardsley Park/Zoo. But my side of the family left CT in the early 1800’s.
I only recently found out that Frederick Law Olmsted designed the park, the same guy that designed New York’s Central Park. So a much smaller park, but a nice pedigree. Never been, would like to see it some day.
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He based Central Park on the park at Birkenhead - the town on the opposite side of the River Mersey from Liverpool.
By the by, I’m always impressed by how far back Americans seem to be able to get with their family history. I am stuck, with a definite ID at 1819, when Samuel Hartley’s son was born. That probably means Samuel was born about 1790/95 but I can’t find any birth records.
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I had no idea. So I went off to Wiki to get a synopsis and found this comment by Olmsted:
" after five minutes of admiration, and a few more spent studying the manner in which art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty, and I was ready to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with this People’s Garden."
Olmsted also commented on the “perfection” of Birkenhead Park’s gardening:
" I cannot undertake to describe the effect of so much taste and skill as had evidently been employed; I will only tell you, that we passed by winding paths, over acres and acres, with a constant varying surface, where on all sides were growing every variety of shrubs and flowers, with more than natural grace, all set in borders of greenest, closest turf, and all kept with consummate neatness."
Thank you for the heads up, Harters!
I am not the one who did all the long hours and work to track back my family. Two of my cousins did it, with a huge amount of help from the Mormon Church who collate a huge amount of genealogical info. Between the two cousins, we have a couple books tracking the Beardsley and (our branch of the) Squires families back to when we left the UK in 1600’s. I am not actually related to the Bnd family. It is an on-line alter ego. 
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He also created (along with his son and two others) the park system called The Emerald Necklace in Boston, which has recently had a major refurbishing and upgrade. It’s a 7-mile-long chain of parks, parkways and waterways includes the Back Bay Fens (and Charlesgate Park), the Riverway, Olmsted Park, Jamaica Pond, Arnold Arboretum and Franklin Park. With 7 parks and 4 parkways, the system spans over 1,000 acres and accounts for half of the City of Boston’s park acreage.
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nice photos!
