20. JOHN⁴ SEYMOUR (John³, John², Richard¹), of Hartford, West Hartford, and New Hartford, Conn., born at Hartford 25 Dec. 1694, died at New Hartford 25 July 1758. He married first, at Hartford, 25 June 1718, LYDIA MASON, baptized at Hartford 2 Aug. 1696, daughter of John and Hannah (Hawes); and secondly, at West Hartford, 7 May 1733, HANNAH⁴ ENSIGN, born at Hartford 19 Jan. 1711/12, died at New Hartford before 3 Jan. 1778, when her children sold property that formerly belonged to her, daughter of David³ (David², James¹) and Hannah (Smith).

John Seymour settled first at Hartford, where eight of his children were baptized at the Second Church. Shortly after 1730 he removed to the West Parish of Hartford, now West Hartford. There he lived on the corner where the middle road to West Hartford intersects “Quaker Lane.” To this road he seems to have given his name, since it was long known as “the John Seymour road.”

He was elected in 1731 an inspector of staddle wood, and again in 1732, 1733 and 1737; leather-sealer, 1739 and 1742; inspector of wood, 1739, 1740, 1743 and 1744; hayward, 1740; and Constable, 1741.

Staddle-wood (an Americanism) was a term applied to standing trees between four and eighteen inches in diameter. The annual election by that small community of an inspector of wood shows the force of the English traditions by which they were controlled. The Hartford of that time was of course surrounded by forests, but this did not prevent its citizens from adopting regulations for the conservation of the timber resources of the colony, and these regulations had their origin in England, where the scarcity of timber had been felt long before the settlement of New England and where stringent regulations for its preservation were already in force.

On Dec. 17, 1741, it was voted that John Seymour Junr., “have liberty to take, upon Lease, a piece of Land upon the Town Comons, for the purpose of sinking Tanfatts therein.”

About 1750 (he was then fifty-six years of age), or it may have been earlier, he removed to New Hartford, then a frontier settlement, where his father, who was at this time alive, owned a large tract of land, the greater portion of which he gave or bequeathed to him. Here he lived in that part of the town known as West Hill, and here “Mr. John Seymour departed this Life July 25, 1758” (New Hartford Town Records).

His grandson, William Seymour, of Fredonia, New York, who as a small boy saw him, remembered that he had “a cancer in his jaws and face.”

In his will, made 11 July 1758, shortly before his death, and proved 19 Sept. 1758, he describes himself as being sick and weak, and mentions his sons Elisha and John Seymour, both of Hartford, his wife Hannah, his two grandchildren, Isaac and Lydia Seymour, children of his son Isaac, late of Hartford, deceased, his sons William and Uriah of New Hartford, “my younger sons,” Elias, Hezekiah, Nathaniel, Elijah, and David, and his daughters Lydia Steele, Abigail Flowers, Lucretia Ensign, Lucina Marsh, Elizabeth Smith, and Hannah, Zerviah, and Sarah Seymour. On 5 Dec. 1758 Hezekiah Seymour, aged 18, Nathaniel, aged 16, Elijah, aged 14 last August, and Zerviah, aged 12 last October, chose their mother, Hannah Seymour, as their guardian, and she was also appointed guardian of her other children under age, viz., David, aged 10, and Sarah, aged 8. The record of this family of twenty children, eighteen of whom survived childhood, is probably unsurpassed elsewhere in the annals of the family.

The author, a descendant of John⁴, writes:

“A little cleared space in the virgin forest undoubtedly received the remains of this patriarch, though there is no record of his burial. As a boy I remember hearing my father say that years before he had searched in vain in the Town Hill Burying Ground for some memorial to this ancestor, and I once searched with him for a headstone, if one there was. Miss Talcott told me half a century ago and more that she had sought in vain for some memorial to this first New Hartford Seymour in the old Town Hill Burying Ground and concluded that he never had any memorial stone, which, back in 1758, would probably have had to be procured from Hartford. I knew it would please the shade of my father to have his son George Dudley supply this deficiency, so last year I erected a headstone (see illustration) to his memory in the Town Hill Yard, with the following inscription, which embraces several generations of Seymours.”

In Memory of John Seymour III
Born at Hartford 1694 - Died here 1758
Settled here about 1750 on land owned
by his Father John Seymour II 1666-1748
who was a grandson of Richard Seymour
1604-1655 the Colonist - His son
William Seymour born at West Hartford 1728
died here 178Z - His son Noah Seymour
born here 1759 died at Sodus Wayne County
New York 1832 A Soldier of the War of the
American Revolution A staunch Federalist -
His son Lot Norton Seymour born here 1788
died here 1844 buried at Nepaug A Farmer
and Millwright he committed “Paradise Lost”
to Memory A Jeffersonian Democrat -
His son Henry Albert Seymour born here
1818 died in Bristol 1897 the ideal Citizen -
His son George Dudley Seymour moved
by filial piety erected this stone A.D. 1935

Deut. XXXII. 7; Job. VIII. 8.
Many of those of the Seymour blood
buried in this yard were descended from Uriah,
son of John Seymour III and
brother of William

(<-- 19. John(4) Seymour) (Back to Start) (21. Ensign Timothy(4) Seymour -->)