N. Y., became a teacher at Whitesborough and Binghamton, and was for twelve years principal of the Stone school, Hartford, Conn., resigning in 1831. In 1828, when he was in his thirtieth year, he brought out “A Geography and Atlas,” which was at once accepted as a standard work, and for thirty years was used in almost every public and private school of the United States. It was many times enlarged and revised, and ran through ninety-eight editions, some of the editions numbering 80,000 copies. Millions of copies were sold, and the popularity of “Olney's Geography” has been surpassed only by that of “Webster's Spelling-Book.” This work has the distinction of having caused a complete revolution in the methods of teaching geography. Mr. Olney was a practical instructor, and was dissatisfied with the existing class-books and treatises, which began with an exposition of the science of astronomy, and, making the centre of the solar system the initial point, developed the scheme until it finally included the earth. Mr. Olney reversed this method. He began with the scholar's own continent — in fact, in the very city, town, or village in which he lived, and made clear by lucid definitions the natural divisions of land and water, illustrating each instance by the use of maps. His plan was to familiarize the child with the surface of the earth by going from the near to the distant, and from the concrete to the abstract, and this system at once overthrew theoretic geography, and initiated the modern practical and descriptive science. The immediate success of the work led Mr. Olney to give up teaching and devote himself to authorship. Leaving Hartford in 1833, he settled in Southington, Conn., until 1854, when he removed to Stratford. After discontinuing to teach, he devoted himself to the cause of popular education. He was for many years a member of the legislature, afterward comptroller of the state for two terms, and used largely his legislative and official powers to build up the system of Connecticut common schools. In 1840 he had become a Unitarian, and for the next fourteen years he gave sympathy and much practical aid to the liberal religious movement that was then agitating New England. His text-books (1831-'52) include other geographies, a series of readers, a “Common-School Arithmetic,” and a “History of the United States.” He also compiled “A Family Book of History”; “Psalms of Life,” poems; and other works.
OLOTORACA, Indian cacique, b. in 1548; d. near Fort San Mateo, Florida, in 1573. He was the nephew of Satouriona, one of the three caciques among whom Florida was divided, and at the time of Pedro Menendez's first expedition, in 1565, served as guide to the Spaniards, as the French had refused to lend assistance to Satouriona against his enemies Outina and Potanou. But the cruelties of the Spaniards soon estranged the Indians, and when Dominique de Gourgues (q. v.) came to revenge Jean Ribaut they were willing to assist him. Olotoraca was instrumental in forming the alliance, and led Satouriona's 300 warriors against the Spanish. But for him Gourgues's expedition would have failed. He guided the French, went to reconnoitre the position of the enemy, and in the assault on the first fort was also the first to mount the glacis, driving his pike through the breast of a Spanish cannoneer. Menendez returned a few months later, and, after rebuilding Fort San Mateo, re-established Spanish dominion in Florida. Olotoraca, who had succeeded Satouriona, fought to the end, murdered the Spanish missionaries, and several times burned and ruined the Spanish establishments. He was at last captured and hanged.
OLSSEN, William Whittingham, clergyman, b. in New York city, 11 May, 1827. He was graduated at Columbia in 1846, and at the Episcopal general theological seminary in New York in 1849. He was then ordained deacon in Holy Trinity church, Brooklyn, N. Y., 1 July, 1849, by Bishop Whittingham, and priest in Grace church, Brooklyn, 29 June, 1851, by Bishop De Lancey, of western New York. For two years, in 1849-'50, he served as missionary at Prattsville, N. Y. He accepted the rectorship of the Church of St. James the Less, Scarsdale, N. Y., in 1851, and held that post for twenty years. In 1871 he was appointed professor of mathematics in St. Stephen's college, Annandale, N. Y., and he was transferred to the chair of Greek and Hebrew literature in 1873. He received the degree of S. T. D. from Columbia in 1876. Dr. Olssen has published “Personality, Human and Divine” (New York, 1882); “Revelation, Universal and Special” (1885); and various sermons and essays on special occasions. He has also contributed freely to church literature.
OLSSON, Olof, clergyman, b. in Björtorp, Vermland, Sweden, 31 March, 1841. He was educated at the universities of Stockholm and Upsala, and was graduated at the latter in 1861, after spending a year (1859-'60) in the Missionary institute at Leipsic. He also studied in the theological department of the University of Upsala, where he was graduated in 1863. He was ordained on 15 Dec. of the same year to the ministry of the Lutheran church, and at once assumed the duties of pastor, serving in that capacity in his native country until 1868. About this time he came to the United States and settled in Lindsborg, Kan., where he was pastor of Swedish Lutheran congregations in 1869-76. Since the latter year he has been professor of theology in the theological seminary of the Swedish Augustana college, Rock Island, Ill. He edited “Nyat Och Gammtl,” a newspaper, at Lindsborg, Kan., in 1873, and “Luther-Kalender,” an annual (Rock Island, Ill., 1883), and has published in Swedish “At the Cross” (Rock Island, Ill.), which has been reprinted in Sweden; “Greetings from Afar, being Recollections of Travels in England and Germany” (1880; also translated into Norwegian and published in Norway); and “The Christian Hope, Words of Consolation in Suffering and Sorrow” (Chicago, 1887).
O'MAHONY, John Francis, Fenian leader, b. in Kilbeheny, County Cork, Ireland, in 1816; d. in New York city, 7 Feb., 1877. He belonged to a family every generation of which, for the last 200 years, had been implicated in movements hostile to English supremacy, and his father and uncle took part in the insurrection of 1798. He entered Trinity college, Dublin, but left this institution without taking a degree, spending most of his time in the study of Hebrew, Sanscrit, and Gaelic. He was already a fine classical scholar, and contributed articles to Irish journals. He began to take part in the repeal movement in 1843, but soon became dissatisfied with the methods of O'Connell, and was active in the party of which Smith O'Brien was the leader. The part that he took in the abortive rebellion of 1848 obliged him to leave the country, and he lived in France till 1854, when he came to the United States. Here he published the "History of Ireland, by Geoffrey Keating, D. D., translated from the Original Gaelic, and Copiously Annotated" (New York, 1857). The mental strain to which O'Mahony was subjected in the preparation of this work, which brought him no pecuniary gain, affected his reason, and he was removed by his friends for a short time to a lunatic asylum. The Fenian
