Hilda Olsen

Hilda Olsen was born in 1896, making her 19 years Nina’s junior.  Hilda was introduced as “Miss Olsen” in Nina’s diary of April 10, 1923, when Nina was working as a library assistant at the Waltham Public Library and Hilda was a teacher of gardening and natural history in the public schools there.  Hilda and Nina went from a professional relationship to a personal friendship, as evidenced not least by becoming on a first-name basis with one another, by September 9, 1923.  Nina and Hilda discovered a shared passion for nature and the outdoors, and a deep friendship was quickly cemented.  Hilda is a professional landscape architect by training, a graduate of the prestigious Lowthorpe School in Groton.  Hilda is the illegitimate daughter of a mother who immigrated to the U.S. from Sweden and worked as a cook in a private home.  Hilda is at turns energetic, sickly, affectionate, moody, manipulative; she is overall force of nature with whom Nina is constantly preoccupied, in an almost obsessive relationship that is difficult to categorize as either mother-daughter or big sister-little sister.  Hilda has lived for several years as a boarder in the home of the late Bradford W. Drake of Waltham, and his daughter, Martha “Dickie” Drake.