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Archiver > NYDUTCHE > 2004-08 > 1092355255


From: Ginny <>
Subject: Aged Katie Seaman
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 20:00:55 -0400


[Not My Family - Just found this lady's life interesting - Any one on this
list who is a subscriber to the Seaman List may feel free to forward this
message to that list]

Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle
Friday Dec. 28, 1883

AGED KATIE SEAMAN
103 Years Old
-Her Life in Dutchess Co. -Indentured When a Girl to Farmer PALMER in the
Town of Washington - Afterwards Cook for Col. HATCH in the Old FORBUS
House - Cooking a Breakfast for Aaron BURR Which He Wouldn't Eat - Her
Father the Brother of Martin VAN BUREN - Her Recollections of Evacuation Day
and Revolutionary Times

On Evacuation Day In New York an Evening Telegram reporter overheard a
Customs Inspector say that a woman named Seaman was residing at 313 West
Thirty-fifth street who was in New York on Evacuation 100 years ago, and the
reporter went to the house referred to. - The upper floor of the house was
occupied by Henry NEWTON, an ex-policeman, with whom Mrs. Catharine SEAMAN
has boarded for ten years at the expense of the Reformed Protestant Dutch
Church in Fulton street, of which she has been a member for years. Mrs.
SEAMAN is a woman of small frame, and the skin on her face and hands is
wrinkled and dry. She has the appearance of an extremely aged person, and
physicians who have seen here say she is certainly over 100 years old. She
is very sick at present.

"I cannot tell you my age," she said to the reporter. It was put down in
the Bible but I have lost that and all my children too."

In connection with some events the old lady's memory is unimpaired, but her
mind wanders when she tries to recall certain episodes in her life. For
instance, she says she was born in Kinderhook, Dutchess county, Kinderhook
being in Columbia county. Her father was the brother of President Martin
VAN BUREN. When she was a mere child she was indentured to a farmer named
Palmer, who lived at the cross roads of Nine Partners, in the town of
Washington Dutchess county, on the highway between Poughkeepsie and Amenia.

When sixteen years old she married James FANNING, a farmer. While working
in a hay field he was sun struck and died before his friends could get him
home. She says that in 1804 she was a cook in a Poughkeepsie hotel kept by
two men, one she remembers as Mr. HATCH.(Mr. HATCH kept the old Forbus House
where the NELSON House now stands.) She was then a widow with five
children, but she does not remember the age of the eldest. Her landlady,
Mrs. NEWTON, thinks the child was about eight years old in 1804, deriving
her impression from what the old lady has said about her family during the
past ten years. If that was the correct age of the first of her five
children - it seems very probable - Mrs. SEAMAN must now be 103 years old,
but the Customs Inspector alluded to the above, who has hand many chats with
the old lady in the past six or seven years, calculates her age at 111.
When asked how she fixed the date of 1804 as the time she was employed in
the Po'keepsie hotel, Mrs. SEAMAN replied, "Aaron BURR often stopped at the
hotel, and he liked the way I broiled and seasoned a beefsteak. Very
shortly after his duel with Hamilton he came there and calling for me,
"Kate, I want you to cook me a steak. The papers at the time were very full
of the accounts of the duel, and Mr. BURR saw them lying on a table in the
barroom. He told Mr. HATCH they were put there to insult him, and he went
away without eating the breakfast I had cooked for him. You know the duel
was in 1804."

Her second husband was Nathaniel SEAMAN. He was a widower with five
children when he married her, and was a well-digger by occupation. He died
from asphyxiation caused by foul gases in a well he was digging. She cannot
remember the date of her second marriage, nor the time of SEAMAN's death.
Her third husband's name was PARDEE, and he was captain of a canal boat. He
died suddenly while away from home, and was buried by strangers.

She was asked if she recollected when the British troops were in New York,
and she said she did, adding, "I was a bit of a girl then, but old enough to
understand what the people were talking about. I know they said the war was
over and mother told father they wouldn't have to pay the English any more
for tea, or something like that. May be I would have forgotten all about
Evacutation Day and what it meant if it hadn't been for the ball we had
every year when the day came around. I was very fond of dancing and went to
all the balls given in that part of the country when I was a girl."

Her recollection of the conversation in relation to the Tea tax indicates
that she must have been more than three years old at the time and therefore
more than 103 years old now.

Mr. and Mrs. NEWTON, and others who know Mrs. SEAMAN, give her credit for
truthfulness, and do not doubt that she is at least 103 years old. She is
active when well, and of choice helps with the housework, "to kill time" as
she expresses it. Her appetite is good and she relishes food. The only
thing she worries over is the fear of dying when alone in the night and for
this reason she is the last person in the house to go to bed and the first
to rise in the morning. Two of SEAMAN's sons live in Williamsburg. Their
step mother vists them occasionally.
--------------------------------
1880 Census - 16th Ward, District 12, New York, New York (Manhattan)
[familysearch.org]
Henry NEWTON Self M Male W 49 NY Painter NY NY
Maggie NEWTON Wife M Female W 47 NY Keeping House NY NY
Kate SEAMAN Mother W Female W 94 NY At Home NY NY
--------------------------------
Ginny
Fort Homestead Association - Join Us Now
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/2843/saveforthomestead.html
An Old House is a Sacred Thing - Chester Allen Smith 1913
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/2843/oldhousesacred.html


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