134. Charles Seymour

134. CHARLES⁶ SEYMOUR (Charles⁵, Timothy⁴, John³, John², Richard¹), born at West Hartford, Conn., 17 Jan. 1777, died at Hartford, Conn., 21 Jan. 1852; married at West Hartford, 20 Dec. 1803, CATHARINE⁶ PERKINS, born at West Hartford, 20 Jan. 1782, died 19 Feb. 1848, daughter of Rev. Nathan⁵ (Matthew⁴, Joseph³, Jacob², John¹) and Catharine. (Pitkin).

He studied with Rev. Nathan Perkins until he was sixteen, when he became a clerk in Hartford. He commenced business for himself when he came of age, and continued a merchant in Hartford for more than fifty years. He held many positions of trust and responsibility. He was treasurer of the First Ecclesiastical Society from 1824 to 1843; one of the vice-presidents of the oldest Savings Bank in Hartford, and chairman of the loaning committee for thirty years; and Director of the American Asylum for Deaf Mutes for the same term of years.

A fine miniature of him, artist unknown, in possession of the family, painted shortly before his marriage, shows a man of fine features, dark hair, and a long oval face, somewhat suggestive of his great-grandson and namesake, Charles Seymour, President of Yale University.

Mrs. Seymour's father, Rev. NathanPerlcins; D.O., was for sixtysix years pastor of the Church of Christjn West Hartford. Her mother was daughter of Rev. Timothy Pitkin of Farmington, Conn., (a son of Gov. William Pitkin), whose wife was Temperance Clap, daughter of Thomas Clap, President of Yale College.

The Seymour home was first on Dorr Street, and later the large brick house on Pratt Street.

Of the above children, Charles, Julia and Emily never married, and lived together, at first on Pratt Street, and later in a large brick house on Collins Street, Hartford. JULIA⁷ SEYMOUR (1804-1886) is recalled as a woman of strong will and determination; she had a good mind, but became a chronic invalid from arthritis, and at the last was blind. CHARLES⁷ SEYMOUR (1807-1886) was a director in many banks and corporations, and in 1843 was elected treasurer of the First Ecclesiastical Society. A relative recalls his love of fast horses, and his long white hair flying in the wind as he drove down Farmington Avenue. Sometimes he would slouch along until some young blood with high-steppers would try to pass him. EMILY⁷ SEYMOUR (1825-1904) is described as the gentler of the two sisters, who led the typical, narrow life of “old maids” in those days. “Aunt Emily” was a member of Center Church, Hartford, and interested in Bible study. She learned Greek after she was sixty, in order to read the New Testament in the original. She felt this to be an “unladylike” accomplishment, and made her nephew, the Greek scholar, Thomas DayS Seymour, whose advice she sought, promise that he would not reveal it until after her death. When a niece in childhood visited the sisters, her doll was taken from her on Saturday night, and on Sunday the little girl would walk back and forth in front of the sideboard on which the doll lay, without daring to ask for it. “Aunt Emily” clung to strict Sabbath observance, and when visited in old age by a grandniece, on Sunday would hand her a religious book in place of the secular magazine she was reading.

The large brick house on Collins Street in which they lived was spacious and dignified and eminently Victorian in its furnishings. The author remembers in particular in the drawing room the large landscapes in leaf gold frames in the taste of that day. Mr. John Day Jackson, a grand-nephew, recalls a statuette of the three Graces, doubtless in Parian marble, judiciously veiled under a canopy of lace simulating a tea-cozy. Mr. Jackson also recalls Thanksgiving dinners which, following a traditional pattern, began with oyster soup in a huge tureen, succeeded by roast turkey and cranberry sauce, an ample chicken pie and attendant dishes which led up to a trinity of pies, the climax of the feast being a service of green and China tea. The trinity of pies must have been accompanied by the traditional Indian pudding, without which no old-fashioned Thanksgiving dinner was complete.

MARY KINGSBURY⁸ TALCOTT (1847-1917) was widely known for her genealogical knowledge of Connecticut families, particularly those of Hartford. She was a founder, and for many years the Registrar, of the Ruth Wyllys Chapter, D. A. R. For almost as long a period, she was Genealogist of the Connecticut Society of Colonial Dames of America. She gave valuable aid in the work of preserving the old stones in the ancient burial ground at Hartford, a work which was vigorously prosecuted by her intimate friend, Mrs. Emily Seymour (Goodwin) Holcombe.

From youth, she was keenly interested in her own ancestry; she joined the Colonial Dames in right of John Talcott, Assistant and Treasurer of the Colony of Connecticut, but filed supplemental claims in right of her “six Governors” – William Bradford, Thomas Dudley, John Haynes, William Pitkin, John Webster, and George Wyllys,six ministers,-Rev. Thomas Clap, D.D., Rev. Noadiah Russell, Rev. Solomon Stoddard, Rev. John Warham, Rev. John Whiting, and Rev. Timothy Woodbridge,-and also John Deming, Col. John Gorham, John Howland of the Mayflower, Capt. Elizur Holyoke, Capt. Joseph Kingsbury, Capt. Richard Osborne, Hon. William Pynchon, Lieut. Robert Seeley, Col. Elizur Talcott, Capt. Samuel Talcott, Richard Treat the Patentee, and Hon. Samuel Wyllys,-a truly amazing galaxy of early New England worthies.

One of Miss Talcott's most important pieces of work was her chapter on the founders of Hartford in the Memorial History of Hartford Couflty (1886). She edited the Kingsbury Genealogy (1905). She was frequently consulted by fellow genealogists and historians. Her interest in the Seymour family, her mother's, was so great that before 1880 she began the collection of data with the intention of publishing a genealogy, an ambition which was never realized. Her collections have, however, been utilized extensively in the present volume. Her last paper, on Ruth Wyllys, was read at four o'clock one afternoon, and she died at ten the same evening, “in harness,” as she would have wished.

Handicapped from early life by serious deafness, Miss Talcott was nevertheless very fond of music. She was a cultivated woman of many interests, wide reading, and fondness for music and art. A friend wrote, “Her character was singularly modest, brave, unselfish, and she fought a good fight for seventy years with great fortitude and unfailing cheer.” She was a member of the following organizations: Arts and Crafts Club of Hartford, Civil Club, Daughters of the American Revolution (Ruth Wyllys Chapter), Hartford Art Society, Hartford Musical Club, Monday Afternoon Club, Colonial Dames of America, and Society of Mayflower Descendants.

KATHARINE SEYMOUR⁹ DAY was born in Hartford, 8 May 1870, eldest daughter of John Calvin and Alice Beecher (Hooker) Day; her father was only son of Calvin Day, born in Westfield, Massachusetts, descended from Robert Day, one of the Founders of Hartford in the company of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, and her mother was the younger daughter of John Hooker (eighth in descent from the Rev. Thomas Hooker) and Isabella Beecher Hooker, daughter of the Rev. Lyman Beecher by his second wife (Harriet Porter of Portland, Maine) and half-sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher.

Miss Day and her sister Alice were taught by Miss Julia Burbank; she then entered the Hartford High School for two years, leaving to go to Europe with her family where they remained for seven years, traveling extensively, and where she studied under various tutors. She and her sister were presented to the Kedievah of Egypt, at the Court of the King and Queen of Wiirttemberg, and at the British Court.

The family returned to Hartford and occupied for two years the home of Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, Mark Twain, who were old friends of the Beecher and Hooker families. Thereafter Miss Day's family moved to New York where she studied art and became interested in social and civic problems, being a Vice-President of the Women's Municipal League, since merged in the Citizens' Union. She continued to travel extensively and exhibited in the Salons National and d'Autumn in 1910-12, studying art for two years in Paris. Becoming more and more interested in education; she graduated from Radcliffe College in 1921, taking her M.A. in 1922. She returned to Hartford in 1927, having bought the home of her great- aunt, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

In Hartford she has been actively interested in historic and civic movements, founding a civic society, the Friends of Hartford, which undertook saving the Mark Twain home-now the Mark Twain Memorial, of which she is First Vice- President, and promoted the formation of The Children's Museum, of which she is a Trustee. She is also a founder and Deputy Governor of the Descendants of the Founders of Hartford, a founder of the Civics Group of Hartford.

She has in her own home much material relating to Mrs. Stowe.

She is a member of the National Society of Colonial Dames, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Mayflower Society, New England Women, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connecticut Academy, the Town and County Club of Hartford, the Cosmopolitan Club of New York, and the Women's City Club, Boston. She is also an M.A. of Trinity College, Hartford.

ALICE HOOKER⁹ DAY, the younger daughter of John Calvin and Alice Beecher (Hooker) Day, was born in Hartford, 3 Jan. 1872, and, like her sister, also educated abroad, and graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1902. In 1910 she married Percy Jackson of New York City and thereafter lived in New York until her death in 1926. She had an active part in all college work, was President of the Bryn Mawr Club of New York, was New York Chairman of the Summer School of Bryn Mawr College, and for years served on the Board of the New York League of Women Voters and the Consumers' League of New York under Mrs. Frederick Nathan, and succeeded Mrs. Nathan as president of the New York League. She was also Secretaryof the National Consumers' League and a Director in the Citizens' Union. She was intensely interested in labor problems, and made many trips to Albany and Washington in the interejJt of better working conditions. She was a woman of wide intellecttial pursuits and, spending many summers at her ranch in New Mexico, became an expert in the archaeology of the Southwest and Central America.

JOHN DAY⁹ JACKSON (1868– ), born at Hartford, Conn., was graduated from Yale College (A.B) in 1890, and studied at Harvard, the University of Berlin, the Sorbonne, and École des Sciences Politiques. He was Washington correspondent of the New York Evening Post and the Newark (N.J.) Evening News, and was capitol representative of the Washington Times, 1893 to 1896. Since 1896 he has been connected with the New Haven (Conn.) Register, as proprietor and editor since 1905. He is widely known for his success in the newspaper field.

He served at one time as Police Commissioner of New Haven, and for four terms as a member of the Board of Education. He is a Republican; and a Congregationalist. He is a member of Societe de Legislation Civile Comparee (Paris), American Society of Newspaper Editors, National Tax Association, Society of Colonial Wars, Sons of the Revolution, Psi Upsilon, Chi Delta Theta, and Elihu Club.

His wife, Mrs. Rose Marie (Herrick) Jackson, is one of the most remarkable and admired women of New Haven; she qualified as a Colonial Dame under Governor John Webster of Connecticut, from whom she is descended through Colonel Ebenezer Marsh of Litchfield, Conn., the Pitkins of Hartford, and the Lymans of Northampton.

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