George Milford Olmsted was something of a legend in our family, in large part due to the fact that in about 1926, he had a falling out with his father, Elmer Elsworth Olmsted, and left home, never to return. When George's brother Raymond Wilfred Olmsted, seventeen years George's junior, tried to find him in the early 1980s, he arrived in Washington State a little too late, because George died in 1977. Turns out that George had worked most of his life in Grays Harbor County, Washington, as a logger, and was involved with the radical labor organization the Industrial Workers of the World. Raymond Olmsted was able to talk to the Superintendent of the Old Soldiers' Home in Orting, where George had lived until his death since a stroke in 1971, and the Superintendent told him that George Olmsted had never told him he had any living relatives. All of his remaining possessions, which fit into a shoebox, were willed to the Industrial Workers of the World at his death. George Milford Olmsted never married. He spent a year in the Army during WWI, and at the time of his entry into the Old Soldiers' Home was living off a $129 a month veterans' pension, and a $128 a month Social Security.
George Milford Olmsted was something of a legend in our family, in large part due to the fact that in about 1926, he had a falling out with his father, Elmer Elsworth Olmsted, and left home, never to return. When George's brother Raymond Wilfred Olmsted, seventeen years George's junior, tried to find him in the early 1980s, he arrived in Washington State a little too late, because George died in 1977. Turns out that George had worked most of his life in Grays Harbor County, Washington, as a logger, and was involved with the radical labor organization the Industrial Workers of the World. Raymond Olmsted was able to talk to the Superintendent of the Old Soldiers' Home in Orting, where George had lived until his death since a stroke in 1971, and the Superintendent told him that George Olmsted had never told him he had any living relatives. All of his remaining possessions, which fit into a shoebox, were willed to the Industrial Workers of the World at his death. George Milford Olmsted never married. He spent a year in the Army during WWI, and at the time of his entry into the Old Soldiers' Home was living off a $129 a month veterans' pension, and a $128 a month Social Security.
