American Seymour Genealogy

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====== Introduction ======

In which the author under the influence of the immortal Cervantes tells the 
story of this book, and introduces to the reader a Professor of Greek, a big-
game hunter, a professional genealogist, a Chief Justice of Connecticut, a 
Governor of New York, a General in the United States Army, a member of Congress, 
a well-known feminist, the first mayor of Hartford, an antiquarian, English 
searchers, other interested persons, a parody, a verse of poetry, and a verse of 
scripture. To many members of the family this will be an unwelcome story. Alas, 
but the author feels that he has no option but to tell it. -- For did not 
Cervantes say, "History is a sacred kind of writing, because truth is essential 
to it."

The author's passion for genealogy goes back to his earliest years, when as a 
small boy he stood by his maternal grandmother's chair and listened, entranced, 
to stories of her "background with figures" -- the background being her 
grandfather's fine farm in the outskirts of Newington, and the figures her 
grandfather and grandmother Wells and their large household. Born Laura Wells, 
she was doubly descended from Governor Thomas Welles of Connecticut, a 
connection that brought in the Wolcotts and Appletons, of which she was also 
proud. The author's first desire as a collector was sometime to acquire the gold 
loop earrings shown in her portrait, and ultimately he did acquire them, but 
only by acquiring the canvas itself, a primitive, if you please, but greatly 
admired by no less a judge than the late John LaFarge. The author also well 
remembers a fruitless boyhood search with his own father among the tombstones in 
the ancient burying-ground on Town Hill, New Hartford, for some memorial of John 
Seymour, 3d, one of the first settlers of the town, where he died in 1758, and 
that search, perhaps, began the taste for tombstones, evidenced in this volume, 
that the author has always had. How he came, at the end of life, to be the 
author of this volume will appear in the course of its Introduction.

Upwards of a hundred years ago, [[237.nathan_perkins|Nathan Perkins Seymour]] 
(1813-1891), a native of Hartford, in the line of [[008.john|John Seymour]], 
grandson of [[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]], the Colonist, began the collection 
of data for a History of the Seymour Family. About 1870 the work was taken up 
and carried on by his niece, [[134.charles|Miss Mary Kingsbury Talcott]]
(1847-1917), a born genealogist and antiquarian, who was greatly assisted by 
contributions of data from other members of the family; among them 
[[241.origen_storrs|Judge Origen S. Seymour]] of Litchfield, sometime Chief 
Justice of Connecticut; [[244.horatio|Governor Horatio Seymour]] of New York; 
[[300.truman|General Truman Seymour]], U.S.A.; [[095.gideon|Mrs. Clara E. 
Seymour Morris]] of Chicago, mother of Mr. Seymour Morris; and many others, 
including the author, another born antiquarian, collector, and genealogist.

Miss Talcott's most active years in collecting data about the family seem to 
have been from 1880 to 1900. Even before the latter date she was already busy as 
professional genealogist and as author of historical articles for books and 
periodicals, but attempts made from time to time to get her to prepare her 
Seymour Family material for publication all failed, and one reason for her thus 
holding back the compilation of her material is certainly to be found in a story 
which the author has now to relate, not for pleasure, but for the reason that, 
as Cervantes said, "the writing of history is a sort of sacred writing, because 
truth is essential to it."  Miss Talcott, throughout her lifetime, had a high 
reputation as an accurate genealogist, and it may well be thought that she was 
unwilling to publish any History of the Seymour Family until an alleged family 
Bible that purported to connect [[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]], the Colonist, 
with the ducal family of Somerset should be either disproved or confirmed.

About 1880, a member of the family who was wholly unknown to the Hartford or 
Litchfield or Utica branches of it appeared "out of the blue," as it were, in 
Hartford, with what purported to be a Bible that had been handed down through 
the generations, even from [[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]], the Colonist. It was 
a mutilated copy of the so-called "Bishop's Bible," printed in 1584, and it 
contained inserts in the form of drawings and written material that, if true, 
connected [[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]] with the highest English nobility. At 
the time of its production the Bible was, most unfortunately, not subjected to 
even the ordinary rules of evidence as to its history and as to the intrinsic 
character of its insertions, but it was, also most unfortunately, made known to 
the family at large throughout the country and was accepted "as Gospel" by many 
of them. That even Miss Talcott, indeed, was in a measure responsible for 
circulating the story of the Bible her own correspondence appears to indicate, 
and to claim that the present author had wholly escaped the infection or had 
always refused to follow leading members of the family in falling for the 
"strawberry leaves" and the ducal family would be idle. He does not, however, 
recall any time when he did not have misgivings about it all, and from the 
moment that he learned of certain entries, soon to be described, in the Parish 
Records of Sawbridgeworth, County Herts, he was entirely disillusioned.

It should here be made clear, perhaps, that in 1880 the science of genealogy was 
still in its infancy in this country, that few Americans were then qualified to 
pass on claims as to the English connections of American colonists, and that 
Miss Talcott herself was only beginning her career in this field. Later, indeed, 
she felt the need of substantiating the allegations of the Bible through British 
documentary sources, and when in 1914 she went to England, one of the objects of 
her visit was definitely either to confirm or to disaffirm the ancestry set 
forth in the Bible. At the behest of other descendants of [[001.Richard| Richard 
Seymour]], among them the Hon. Henry W. Seymour, M.C., with whom the author 
became acquainted while he too was a resident of Washington, the most exhaustive 
researches, over the course of the years, were undertaken abroad by several 
competent genealogists, but all of them failed utterly to establish the 
connection alleged in the Bible. On the contrary, half a dozen genealogists of 
repute, including Colonel Vivian, in his day the best-known authority on 
Devonshire families, and Henry F. Waters, an expert never excelled in the Anglo-
American field, to whom photographs of the Bible entries were submitted, 
unanimously declined to accept the handwriting as script of the period when 
[[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]] and his son [[003.John|John]] flourished.

Meanwhile, the whole matter of the publication of a history of the family lay in 
abeyance, and it so happened that in 1914 Mr. J. Gardner Bartlett, an American 
professional genealogist, then living in England, was commissioned to 
investigate the English ancestry of the celebrated Chauncey family. His search 
took him to Sawbridgeworth, County Herts, where he found in the parish records 
entries regarding one [[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]], his wife Mercy Ruscoe, 
and his son [[002.Thomas|Thomas]], and other members of both families. The dates 
of this [[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]], his wife Mercy, and his son 
[[002.Thomas|Thomas]], when compared with corresponding dates of a 
[[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]] and his wife Mercy and his son 
[[002.Thomas|Thomas]], all as contained in Connecticut records, together with 
other significant facts, left no room for doubt that Mr. Bartlett had found the 
English home of [[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]], the Colonist, who appeared in 
Hartford about 1639.

Mr. Bartlett forthwith embodied his discoveries in a comprehensive report, which 
for a consideration he offered in turn to two or three branches of the Seymour 
family in America, but all of them were unwilling to give it any credence or 
attention, until at length it was brought to the attention of the present 
author, always a "doubting Thomas" about the entries in the so-called "Seymour 
Bible." He was enabled to buy the report, and he ultimately published it, in 
substance, in the //New England Historical and Genealogical Register// of 1917.

Due, in part at least, to the publication of Mr. Bartlett's report, the late Mr. 
Seymour Morris of Chicago, who accepted it without question and who despaired of 
the publication of the material collected by Miss Talcott, went ahead on his own 
account, collected data, and published in the //New England Historical and 
Genealogical Register// in 1918 and 1919 three installments of a proposed 
history of the family. Mr. Morris's work was unfortunately brought to a close by 
his death in 1921.

In 1934 the present author, whose active interest in a History of the Seymour 
Family had begun at least as early as when he went to Washington to live in 1878 
and began corresponding with Miss Talcott, determined to carry Mr. Morris's work 
to a conclusion. Mr. Morris's widow deposited his papers, including his 
unpublished data, with the New England Historic Genealogical Society of Boston, 
and through the good offices of Mr. Jacobus, editor of the present work, the 
papers were made available by the Society. Mr. Jacobus then at long last began 
to prepare a comprehensive History of the Seymour Family, at first based on Mr. 
Morris's published and unpublished work. After the work was well under way Miss 
Katherine Seymour Day of Hartford, who had inherited a trunk full of Miss 
Talcott's correspondence, consented to make it, too, available to Mr. Jacobus, 
and he then went forward to compile the present work, combining the collections 
of Miss Talcott with the work of Mr. Morris. No attempt was made to collect any 
large amount of new material, but it was decided to carry all of the descendants 
of the Colonist down to the sixth generation, in order that subsequent workers 
in the field should have no difficulty in bringing the lines down to date.

From the first, however, the author determined not to go to publication with any 
History of the Seymour Family until the authenticity of the so-called "Seymour 
Bible" had been settled for good or for ill. When, in the "revolving years," the 
person who had sprung the Bible "out of the blue" in Hartford died in Brookline 
(1906) and was "gathered to his fathers," the Bible was acquired from his widow 
by two members of the Connecticut family, but they too implicitly believed in 
its authenticity, and in their hands it was still unavailable for subjection to 
ordinary rules of evidence. Thirty years and more passed and the problem 
presented by the Bible remained unsolved, until at last the Bible came to the 
hands of its present owner, happily cooperative, who allowed it to be put into 
the hands of the Librarian of Yale University, who in turn put it into the hands 
of competent experts for examination. The unequivocal report of the experts is 
that the Bible entries are forgeries.

And so we come to the story of the Bible itself, but first it must be explained 
that in June, 1881, the Bible's first owner, who was in funds, bought a house in 
Newport, on which the mortgage was foreclosed three years later, in 1884. During 
those few years, as is supposed, the owner of the Bible had a die made with the 
full ducal arms, which he used for embossing his own personal stationery; he had 
a similar seal cut, of which he sent impressions to Mr. Nathan Perkins Seymour, 
then a professor at Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio; he had a handsome 
book-plate engraved with the full ducal arms; and he had the arms displayed on 
his Newport house. How much the display of the ducal arms in these several forms 
contributed to his Newport establishment may easily be surmised.

Also in the summer of 1881, probably in August, Professor Nathan Perkins Seymour 
was visiting in his native Hartford, and the Bible was shown to him and of 
course excited his great interest and curiosity. He was even allowed to remove 
bits of a. sheet of paper that was pasted over what appeared to be writing on 
the inside of the front cover of the book, and had the owner, supposedly 
present, cooperated with him and allowed him to remove all of the paper, the 
great delusion about the Bible would have been dispelled then and there, over 
half a century ago, and Professor Nathan Perkins Seymour would be the hero of 
this narrative. The owner, however, seems to have lacked curiosity, or to have 
begun even then to suspect that he had been "taken in" when (as will shortly 
appear) he bought the Bible, and although in a letter to Professor Seymour, 
dated at Newport, August 12, 1881, he announced his intention of peeling off all 
the paper, he never did so. His letter to Professor Seymour, embossed with the 
full arms of the ducal family of Somerset, contained this paragraph:

<blockquote>
When I have peeled off all the paper and laid bare the writing\\
upon the cover of the Bible, I will send you a transcript, but from\\
what you took off, I judge that it is nothing but someone's careless\\
scribbling during the present century and of no account whatever.
</blockquote>

When the paper was finally peeled off by an expert employed by the Librarian of 
Yale University, the following inscription was uncovered:

<blockquote>
George Cole's Book\\
the Gift of his dear\\
friend Richard [  ]\\
the twenty third of the\\
Eleventh Month\\
One thousand Eight Hundred\\
Twenty One
</blockquote>

On February 2, 1882, about six months after the near-revealing session between 
Professor Nathan Perkins Seymour and the owner of the Bible, the latter 
deposited the Bible (and took a receipt for it) in the vault of a Boston bank, 
and there it remained until after his death in 1906. As far as is known, it was 
seen during all of this period by only one member of the family. In the latter 
part of 1901 or in 1902 it was shown to Henry W. Seymour of Washington, but only 
in the ante-room of the vault. Some time about 1891 the author made a special 
trip to Boston for the purpose of seeing the Bible with his own eyes, but all he 
saw was its owner, then living in Brookline, apparently in reduced 
circumstances. The author had, of course, long had photographs of the 
significant pages of the Bible, secured from a Newport photographer, and he 
explained to the owner the object of his visit and his own belief that the Bible 
ought to be submitted to expert examination, but he was obliged to return to New 
Haven without seeing it. The reason seems obvious enough. Had he appeared, not 
as a "doubting Thomas," but as a true believer, his journey to Boston might not 
have been in vain.

Since the actual examination of the Bible by experts, the author, not content 
with that alone, has undertaken further to unravel its history and has learned 
from persons close to the family of the owner's widow that the owner did not 
acquire the Bible by descent. He bought it. About the owner himself the author 
learned that he had a good record in the Civil War; that he had hunted big game 
in South America; and had hunted a fortune in Java; and none of these 
experiences can have prepared him to pass on the authenticity of the Bible when 
it was offered to him for purchase. It may be surmised that he was persuaded by 
the dealer of the genuineness of the entries in the Bible, and that he therefore 
welcomed the chance, as he viewed it, to bring the ownership of the Bible back 
into the family.

That the Bible could not have gone to the owner by descent ought, in fact, long 
since to have been apparent, especially to Miss Talcott. In the trunk containing 
her papers, as may now be told, was found a sheet of the Bible owner's 
correspondence paper, embossed with the ducal arms of Somerset, and on the 
paper, in the owner's handwriting, is a schedule of his claimed descent from 
Richard the Colonist, but the schedule is incorrect. It postulates his descent 
from Thomas<sup>3</sup> Seymour of Hartford,. the grandfather of the First 
Mayor, rather than from Zachariah<sup>3</sup> Seymour, youngest son of 
[[003.John|John]]<sup>2</sup>, a younger son of the Colonist. In other words, 
the owner's own conception of his place in the family was entirely wrong. The 
improbability that a family Bible of the highest import should have descended 
through younger sons in nearly every generation ought alone, it must be thought, 
to have been enough to put Miss Talcott, and others in the family who accepted 
the Bible, on their guard. The schedule of the owner's claimed descent is not 
dated and not accompanied by any letter, but presumably, it was submitted to 
Miss Talcott at the same time that the Bible itself was first called to her 
attention, back about 1880 or 1881.

Nor is this the only evidence long available that denies the ancestry set forth 
in the Bible. On September 2, 1816, Thomas Seymour, the venerable First Mayor of 
Hartford, then in his eighty-first year, entered in a "Memorandum Book" that had 
belonged to his father an attested statement which he called "a summary of the 
origin of my ancestors from their very first coming from England and settlement 
in this Town"; and since 1892, when Dr. Parker's "History of the Second Church 
in Hartford" was published, the First Mayor's statement has been easily 
accessible to all. "For more than two hundred years," says Dr. Parker in his 
//History, //"this Seymour family maintained an unbroken continuity of 
membership in this Church or Society which John Seamer helped to found, and for 
the greater part of that time exercised a commanding influence in its affairs"; 
and he quotes the First Mayor's statement, which is in part as follows:

<blockquote>
A summary of the origin of my ancestors from their first coming\\
from England and settlement in this Town, and of the time of\\
their births and deaths, so far as appears from old Books and\\
entries found and now in my possession, and the information of old\\
people now deceased.

//Richard Seymour//, from England, was the first of the name, and\\
amongst the early settlers of the Town, and from whom the numer-\\
ous families of that name {it is said} have descended in America,\\
particularly in this Town and in Connecticut. He had several sons,\\
one of which was named //John//, my great-grandfather, and settled in\\
this Town. Another of them settled in Norwalk, whose posterity\\
remain there till this day. //Capt. Thomas Seymour,// the son of John,\\
died August 30th, 1740, aged 72. His mother's name was Watson.

//Thomas Seymour, Esq.,// my Father, died March, 1767, aged 62.\\
He was a Deacon of the 2d Church, Justice of the Peace, King's\\
attorney, &c., &c.: married in the year 1730 to Hepzibah Merrel,\\
Daughter of Deacon Daniel Merrel.((The writer listed here, before attesting, the 
births of the children of Thomas and Hephzibah (Merrel) Seymour, including his 
own. To present the attested statement as nearly as possible in its original 
form, the author has omitted some explanatory detail which Dr. Parker inserted 
in square brackets. The full statement will be found at page 134 of the "History 
of the Second Church of Christ in Hartford," by Edwin Pond Parker, published at 
Hartford in 1892.)) ......, Attest, Sept.

2d, 1816. T. Seymour, aged 81 years, & 6 months, the 17th day of\\
this month.
</blockquote>

As to what purpose the First Mayor had in mind in making this sworn statement 
there is now no evidence, but it is clear that he was very serious about it, as 
he specifically says that he consulted "old Books and entries found and now in 
my possession, and the information of old people now deceased." The statement 
itself, moreover, appears to be in every respect correct, and no doubt exists 
either as to the authenticity of the "Memorandum Book," which is dated 1747, or 
as to the fact that the First Mayor himself made the statement quoted from it. 
At the time the statement was made, the First Mayor was the virtual head of the 
American Seymour Family. He was a college-bred man (Yale, 1755), as was his 
father before him (Yale, 1724); he had an enviable position at the bar, as had 
his father before him; he had been King's Attorney, as had his father before 
him; he had been State's Attorney after the Revolution; he had been the First 
Mayor of Hartford, which position he held for twenty-seven years; he and his 
family had occupied a first social position in the community; and he was great-
grandson of [[003.John|John Seymour]], through whom the so-called "Seymour 
Bible" purported to have descended to the person who produced it about 1880. Yet 
in the carefully worded and attested statement of this distinguished man there 
is not the least suggestion (If the existence of any family Bible or of any 
knowledge about Richard the Colonist except the bare statement that he came from 
England. The First Mayor was grandson of Richard's grandson; his branch of the 
family had resided continuously in Hartford; and if there had been among the 
"old people now deceased" any knowledge or tradition of a family Bible or of 
noble descent or connections, it is inconceivable that he would not have 
referred to it in his statement. The lack of any such reference is almost 
conclusive evidence that no tradition of the kind was known among the older 
members of the family, even though they were, both in line and descent, close to 
Richard the Colonist.

When the First Mayor's sworn statement became easily accessible with the 
publication of Dr. Parker's //History// in 1892, only about a decade after the 
appearance of the Bible in Hartford, there was every reason for Miss Talcott and 
for all believers in the Bible to be on their guard. It may be, indeed, that 
Miss Talcott was already familiar with the statement, but it is also quite 
possible that she never knew of it at all until Dr. Parker's book appeared, and 
in either case it is more than likely that she did not fully appreciate its 
significance. In 1916, however, the present author communicated to her the news 
of the Bartlett report, with the discovery of the entries in the Parish Records 
of Sawbridgeworth, and she then at once foresaw that when the report was made 
known to the family at large, the publication of a family history on her part 
would be made very difficult. The author is constrained to believe that while 
her faith in the so-called "Seymour Bible" must have been shaken long before the 
blow actually fell, she had never seriously entertained the thought that the 
Bible was an out-and-out forgery or that it had been bought by the person who 
produced it.

Other members of the family, too, failed to see the significance of the First 
Mayor's statement, and in spite of its publication in Dr. Parker's book, the 
efforts to confirm the forged entries in the Bible were continued. for years 
thereafter, showing, it must be declared, not so much that the believers were 
gullible as that they were human, eager to exalt their own ancestry, one of the 
oldest weaknesses of the race. Exalted claims of noble if not royal ancestry 
have been made, at one time or another, for nearly every old American family. 
The //Encyclopaedia Britannica// says of genealogies published in this country 
that many "combine the results of laborious research in American records with 
extravagant and unfounded claims concerning the European origin of the families 
dealt with." One after another, these claims have been examined and rejected by 
the better-informed of our native genealogists, only to reappear with 
undiminished splendor in the next publication, due we must suppose to 
indifference or to stubborn vanity. In passing, we must refer to the sad 
demolition, as recently as April 1938 in //The American Genealogist,// of the 
oldest and most cherished of our Connecticut "pedigrees of delusion,"-the 
Haynes-Harlakenden descent from the Plantagenets has now been proclaimed a myth!

The author, indeed, opines, though he be put down a cynic for saying so, that 
there are thousands of Americans of the old stock who would far rather trace 
their descent from Edward Seymour, First Duke of Somerset, than from 
[[001.Richard|Richard Seymour]] of Sawbridgeworth, even though the latter may be 
thought to have sired a finer race of men than the former. The author cannot 
refrain from inserting here a parody that has long amused him and that will be 
readily recognized by all readers of Tennyson.

<blockquote>
Of course 'tis noble to be good,\\
But what are hearts to coronets\\
And simple faith to Norman blood.
</blockquote>

The task of "tearing the strawberry leaves," so to speak, from the brows of the 
American Seymours is not a grateful one to the author and is not commending him 
to many members of his family; but then he reflects that, as our own Bryant 
tells us,

<blockquote>
Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, ---\\
The eternal years of God are hers;\\
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,\\
And dies among his worshippers.
</blockquote>

Nor can he forget the words of a still greater writer: "Pride goeth before 
destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18).

The fact is that from the time the author first decided to publish the present 
book it has been his intention to discuss the Bible at length. He has been 
advised that this is not necessary, that it is quite sufficient simply to state 
that expert examination has proved the Bible a forgery, but since many people. 
as the author feels sure, do not value expert opinion. and since different 
experts may, in fact, give different opinions, it he seemed necessary to give 
some history of the Bible, quite apart from what any expert says about it. When 
Mr. Jacobus had access to Miss Talcott's papers, more. over, he found a great 
body of letters from members of the family, all thrilled at the idea of noble 
descent, and it is to them and to their offspring that a complete explanation is 
due.

To-day the Bible plainly appears to be what it is-a crude forgery that was 
produced under circumstances so suspicious in themselves that acceptance, even 
tentatively, by so many members of the family seems incredible. The particular 
copy of the Bishop's Bible used by the forger had been rebound at some remote 
period; it lacks some twenty pages, including the title-page; and from what the 
author can learn, its auction-room value in 1880, as an imperfect copy, can have 
been only a trifling sum. What the person who first bought it paid for it will, 
of course, never be known, but at his death in 1906 his widow sold it to a 
believer for a very substantial price. With the forgeries made a part of it, its 
worth proved to be many times what it could have brought merely as a defective 
copy of a famous old edition of the Bible.

Some years ago the author had a slide made from a photograph of a page of the 
Bible that purported to give an account of some commercial transaction. In what 
appeared to be a specimen of genuine seventeenth century handwriting, the 
account had been written over and so changed as to bring the name "Seymour" into 
it, and when the slide was thrown on the screen, the changed inscription :was 
palpably the work of a forger. At about the same time the author employed Mr. 
Jacobus, now the editor of this book, but also well known for his familiarity 
with old handwriting, to examine photographs of the Bible, and Mr. Jacobus then 
reported that the entries bore evidence of being faked. This was years before 
the Bible was submitted to expert examination through the good offices of Mr. 
Keogh, the Yale Librarian, and years before the author had gone into the history 
of the Bible and proved to his own satisfaction that the person who first 
displayed it never inherited it, but actually bought it.

In the old days, or had one better say "in the lost years," Miss Talcott told 
the author over and over again that she was prepared to enrich her data with 
many stories of the family that she had gathered from her elders and kinsfolk in 
Hartford, and the author began at an early date to collect illustrations for her 
use; but she never got around to making notes of her vast stores of personal 
material, now impossible to recover, and the author, quite naturally, long ago 
abandoned his idea of collecting illustrations for her use. He has, however, 
done what he could to collect material about the First Mayor of Hartford and his 
family, and he has been able to pick up several illustrations of the First 
Mayor's belongings, to represent him, in away, in lieu of his portrait, which 
was destroyed. As the author is publishing this book entirely at his own 
expense, he has naturally chosen such illustrations as suit his own feelings or 
as happen to be at hand. Any compiler of a family history knows how hard it is 
to secure data from members of the family. Letters and pictures are withheld, 
apparently, for no better reason than indifference. Any member of the family who 
is disposed to criticise the work is free to try his own hand at writing and 
publishing a history to suit his own taste.

If the author had begun back in 1880 or thereabouts to collect basic material 
for this history, he would have asked in his questionnaire for information 
regarding the height, size, color of eyes, hair and skin, and facial 
characteristics. He would also have called for portraits and pictures of houses 
and of matters of family tradition. In this way he might peradventure have 
collected enough material to predicate characteristics of the family as a race. 
Miss Talcott reached the conclusion that the spirit was martial and it does 
appear that many men were engaged in the different wars notably as officers as 
well as in the ranks.

As for the inordinate family pride with which the members of the family have 
long been charged, it must be admitted as true so far as the Hartford branch 
descended from the first [[003.John|John Seymour]] of Hartford is concerned. 
This pride long antedates the appearance of the alleged Seymour Bible. The 
author leaves it to the readers of this book to determine the reasons for this 
pride, but will not add more himself except to say that so far as his experience 
goes the members of the family have not suffered from what is now described as 
an "inferiority complex." It is often said that, pride of blood is less to be 
condemned than pride of purse. Money getting has never been a family 
characteristic. No more has display on the part of those who had it. Despite the 
high social position occupied for years by groups of the family in Hartford and 
Litchfield, Conn., and in Utica and Cazenovia, N.Y., the family has been free 
from anything like ostentation. They built no notably fine estates and in 
general paid little attention to the appanages of wealth and social caste. Even 
their mortuary remains (and the author deplores it) are meagre and 
insignificant, and one is reminded of the attitude of the high-born Wyllyses in 
that regard. No monument of any sort can be found to-day to the First Mayor of 
Hartford, and the stones erected to some members of his family have been allowed 
to fall into decay.

In conclusion, it may be said that the records at Sawbridgeworth and elsewhere 
indicate that Richard the Colonist and his wife Mercy were far removed from the 
arms-bearing class; but the fact remains that over two and a quarter centuries 
have passed since the day in 1712 when [[002.Thomas|Thomas Seymour]] of Norwalk, 
English-born eldest son of the Colonist, being then very "sicke and weak," 
sealed his will with a small seal (which seal may be seen to-day in the State 
Library in Hartford) charged with the wings forming the paternal coat of the 
Seymours of Penhow. That [[002.Thomas|Thomas Seymour]] used a seal for any other 
purpose than to comply with the common law requirement of a seal of some kind is 
wholly incredible, and that any contemporary who saw the seal on the document 
had the faintest idea what those wings signified is almost equally so, but it is 
certain that a relatively poor man, living in a pioneer settlement, would not 
have thought of having a seal cut to "exalt his horn" and would have had no 
opportunity for doing so, if he had thought of it. The actual impression on the 
will, moreover, shows that it was made from a seal that was already old and 
worn. The seal from which it was made must have been brought to this country by 
Richard the Colonist, whose original will no longer exists to show whether it 
too was sealed with the same seal.

Since the above was written, Stewart Mitchell's biography of "Horatio Seymour of 
New York" has been issued (1938) by the Harvard University Press. Dr. Mitchell 
comments (page 4) on the will of [[002.Thomas|Thomas Seymour]] in 1712, "to 
which he affixed a seal with wings that recalled //[sic]// those of the arms of 
the great house of Seymour of Penhow," and reaches the astonishing conclusion 
that he "had probably used the first seal which came to hand, with never a 
thought of its significance or any knowledge of what it might resemble." Such an 
explanation will hardly satisfy students of heraldry,-nor, for the matter of 
that, should it satisfy students of history. The wings on the seal do not 
//recall// or //resemble,// to use his own terms, the wings of the Seymours of 
Penhow; beyond question they //are// the "two wings conjoined in lure" of the 
Penhow family. To suppose that [[002.Thomas|Thomas Seymour]] reached for "the 
first seal which came to hand," and inadvertently, in that primitive colonial 
hamlet, picked up the actual seal of the historic Seymour family, is to ask us 
to believe in miracles. Heraldic symbols were exceedingly rare in that time and 
place, and when one was used it was not by chance. The author has examined 
dozens of wills of Fairfield County residents in the period between 1700 and 
1720, and saw only one other which was sealed with an unmistakable heraldic 
device, most of the wills being sealed with red wax bearing no impression or 
with seals of conventional. non-heraldic designs.

If [[002.Thomas|Thomas Seymour]] of Norwalk "used the first seal which came to 
hand," and the author concedes that as likely, then we are constrained to 
believe that he used his own seal ring, and that it was an heirloom which, 
although his generation may not have been aware of it, pointed to a remote 
connection with the Seymours of Penhow, though possibly the connection may have 
been derived through the Seymers of Dorsetshire((See [[Popham_Colony|"Richard 
Seymer of the Popham Colony," Appendix.]])) rather than through the Devonshire, 
later the ducal, branch of the ancient family, both of which used the "two wings 
conjoined in lure," as on the seal of Thomas.

Moreover, Thomas Seymour, Esq. (1705-1767), of Hartford, grand-nephew of Thomas 
of Norwalk, sealed his will with a seal bearing the same wings, and his son, the 
First Mayor of Hartford, did the same. This shows that both the First Mayor and 
his father had an appreciation of the value of arms-bearing ancestry and that a 
knowledge or tradition of the right to display the Seymour wings had surely been 
transmitted to them. This fact makes it all the more likely, however, that if 
the First Mayor had had any specific knowledge of noble ancestry, he would have 
embodied the tradition in the attested statement, already quoted, that he made 
on September 2, 1816.

Whether any attempt to trace the family in England further back than John 
Seymour, grandfather of [[001.Richard|Richard the Colonist]], can be anything 
but futile, is extremely doubtful. Mr. Bartlett tried to do so, but without 
success, for the simple reason that the search took him into a period when 
parish records were not compulsory. The author also employed Mr. Bartlett to 
make further investigations along the line of the Colonist's grandfather, but 
without finding any clue. Mr. Bartlett's opinion was that Richard's grandfather 
had come from a different locality. The author subsequently employed Mr. Jacobus 
too, through his English correspondents, to make further searches, but again 
without success. F or his own part, the author feels that the record of the 
family in this country is sufficient in itself. The American Seymours have been 
men and women of character, high breeding, integrity, and devotion to public 
service, and until the unfortunate appearance of the so-called "Seymour Bible," 
they were without any pretense to noble ancestry. The ghost of the Bible has now 
been laid. It was General Truman Seymour who said:((In a letter, 28 May 1881.))

<blockquote>
Except as a motive of curiosity there is little to be gained by\\
settling the question [the English origin of the family]. The\\
American Seymours are quite as respectable as the English and\\
have nothing to ask, in dignity, from any relationship.\\
<cite>G.D.S.</cite>
</blockquote>

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