American Seymour Genealogy

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==== GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR ====

//This section is included in the book under the profile for
[[296.Henry_Albert|Henry Albert Seymour]]<sup>8</sup>.  For more information,
see this Wikipedia page: [[wp>George Dudley Seymour]].//

**GEORGE DUDLEY<sup>9</sup> SEYMOUR** (1859--1945),((The following rehearsal of Mr.
Seymour's public activities is substantially quoted from the "Story of
Connecticut," for which it was compiled some years ago.)) born and bred in
Bristol, Hartford County, Connecticut, was educated at the local graded schools
and the Hartford Public High School (1878), and in 1880 received the degree of
LL.B., from Columbian Law School, Washington, D.C. On October 6, 1883 his
twenty-fourth birthday, Mr. Seymour opened an office in New Haven for the
practice of patent law and for soliciting patents. Apart from his long and
successful professional career he is best known for his interest in community
welfare an interest that he traces to the fact that his father took him, as a
small boy, to town meetings and impressed upon his mind the obligation of every
man to take some part in public affairs beyond merely voting. These early
lessons in civics were never forgotten by the son. Mr. Seymour, feeling no
aptitude for city politics, did not take part in the usual political life of
his adopted city, and did not hold any public office of a political nature.
However, his interest in his city made him the author and leader of a sustained
effort to induce New Haven to adopt a systematic plan for its future growth,
using the historic Green (laid out in 1638) as a civic center, and to provide
New Haven harbor with up-to-date terminal facilities that would make the harbor
one of the city's chief commercial assets.  He is also well known for his
interest in early Connecticut architecture and architects and in the furnishings
of the early houses; and particularly for reviving the memory of Captain Nathan
Hale, originating and leading a movement to place a statue in memory of Hale
upon the Old Campus of Yale College, and himself buying and reconditioning the
birthplace of Nathan Hale in South Covent as a shrine of the patriot, who was
hanged by the British as a spy in 1776.

Mr. Seymour's interest in the art and practice of city planning sprang from
contacts in Washington with some of the principal men working there for a return
to Major L'Enfant's plan for the development and ornamentation of the national
capital. The idea of city planning was then beginning to attract attention in
some of the progressive American cities and Mr. Seymour conceived the idea of
bringing the message of city planning to New Haven which has he is fully
persuaded, the oldest existing organized town plan on the American continent.
Its great central open square, although primarily designed to serve as a market
place, was wonderfully adapted, as he envisioned it to form the civic center of
the New Haven of the future, if surrounded by public and semi-public buildings,
and offered an opportunity not surpassed in the entire country.

Mr. Seymour's first opportunity for real public service in this direction to the
city of his adoption came in 1906, when he appeared before a committee of the
Board of Aldermen in opposition to a petition presented by the directors of the
New Haven Public Library, asking for a site on the Green itself for a new public
library building.  The petition was defeated, and it is significant of the
change of feeling that has since taken place regarding the Green, that it now
seems hardly possible that the directors of the Library Board could ever have
recommended the building of a public library upon the Green, the invasion of
which Mr. Seymour felt would be nothing less than a public calamity.

And yet the very next year the city was threatened with the erection of a huge
hotel facing the Green on the site of Mayor Sargent's house. Mr. Seymour saw at
once that the erection of a hotel on the key-site in question would be a serious
blow to New Haven. To checkmate the project, he immediately prepared a
comprehensive paper urging the adoption of city planning by New Haven and the
utilization of the Green as its //civic center//. This paper was simultaneously
published in full as an open letter to the Mayor, Board of Aldermen, and
citizens of the city and county of New Haven, on June 2, 1907, in the issues of
the //New Haven Sunday Register//, //Leader// and //Union//. It attracted wide
attention, and led not only to the formation of a committee of citizens to
secure a city plan, but also to the raising of a fund of about $8,000 for the
purpose, and to inviting Mr. Cass Gilbert, one of the foremost architects of
the country, and Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the country's foremost
landscape architect, to visit New Haven. After studying the plan of the city,
they drafted a report with recommendations.

This was no mean task, and due to one thing and another, the report was not
published until 1910, and even then it attracted far less attention in
conservative old New Haven than in the country at large. However, an Act of the
Connecticut Legislature, approved May 28, 1913, creating a City Plan Commission,
was secured, and the commission was soon organized, with Mayor Rice its
chairman, and Mr. Seymour its secretary. The project had from the beginning the
enthusiastic support of the Chamber of Commerce, then led by Colonel Isaac M.
Ullman, but it was destined largely to fail because it never secured the real
support of the municipal government, without which, as Mr. Olmsted declared,
city planning could not be "put over."

As an improvement closely related to his city-planning project, Mr. Seymour, in
1913, led a campaign for the provision of the harbor with terminal facilities,
with the view that the harbor might again be utilized as one of the chief
commercial assets of New Haven.  That project, too, though care fully organized
and endorsed by armer President Taft, and supported by the Chamber of
Commerce, was destined to fail, although the Chamber's Harbor Committee employed
Major Cassius E. Gillette, an army engineer of ability and experience
recommended by Mr. Taft who, as Secretary of War, had become familiar with the
subject of such engineering projects. Both Mr. Taft and Colonel Ullman were very
alive and helpful in this ill-fated enterprise, in which nothing was seemingly
accomplished. The day of the harbor has not yet come, but it is approaching,
beyond doubt.

With these two major projects -- city planning and harbor improvements -- Mr.
Seymour was almost continuously engaged from 1907 to 1924, as the local
newspapers covering this period afford Ample evidence. To rehearse the details
would be impracticable, but some idea of these and other activities may be
gained by consulting the articles listed in Appendix XI, which articles, for the
most part, were prepared in support of the proposed plans and were published in
the current local papers, if peradventure they do not fall into dust before they
are consulted. In 1924 Mr. Seymour presented his resignation from the City Plan
Commission in a long letter addressed to Mayor FitzGerald, in which he reviewed
his aims in the premises.  (This letter was subsequently printed as "A Citizen's
Valedictory," by Mr. Lewis S. Welch, one of Mr. Seymour's most active sup-
porters in his various city improvement enterprises.)

Although both of these major projects, originated and untiringly pushed year
after year by Mr. Seymour, failed in their main objectives, their by-products
have been in some measure compensatory. Thus Mr. Olmsted, with his wonderful
vision, saw during his studies of the New Haven terrain in 1907 a great
opportunity for an all-the-year-round park and playground in the extensive well-
nigh-useless low swampy West River meadows. He enthused Mr. Seymour with the
idea, who passed it on to Colonel Ullman and so to the City Plan Commission,
where it long languished. Colonel Ullman and Mr. Seymour, however, both later
became members of the New Haven World War Memorial Committee and continued so to
cherish the idea that with some finesse they succeeded through Mr. Olmsted (a
story as yet untold) in "selling" the idea to Mayor FitzGerald, in whose
administration it was "put over," and a park (West River Memorial Park) of some
two hundred acres in extent is now under way, though nothing has yet been done
regarding the obelisk which was the keynote of Mr. Olmsted's design and was
deemed necessary by him to mark the park as New Haven's World War Memorial. Mr.
Frederick L. Ford, then the city engineer, was an active participant in this
project. But the park will f ail as a //War Memorial// until the obelisk is
erected, to complete Mr. Olmsted's design.

Two other parks have also come to New Haven Seymour's interest and activity. The
Congress having authorized the Secretary of War to dispose of Federal
reservations no longer useful for defensive purposes, it was reported to Mr.
Seymour that certain business interests were in correspondence with the War
Department regarding the purchase of the Fort Hale reservation of some thirty
acres on the east shore of New Haven harbor, with the idea of buying it and
converting it into an amusement park. Fearful that while the "City Fathers"
were resting in fancied security, such a sale might take place, Mr. Seymour
acted on his own personal responsibility. In June, 1921, he induced Colonel John
Q. Tilson, M. C. for this District, to introduce a bill into Congress
authorizing the Secretary of War to transfer the title of the reservation to the
city of New Haven as a permanent memorial to Captain Nathan Hale. Mr. Seymour
agreed at the same time to provide speakers when the bill came to a hearing
before the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives.

A little later, also at Mr. Seymour's request, Colonel Tilson introduced into
Congress a bill f or the cession to the city of the small Federal reservation
known as "Lighthouse Point," including the old stone lighthouse, and both bills
came on for hearing on January 17, 1922. As previously agreed, Mr. Seymour made
careful preparations for this hearing. He even succeeded in enlisting the
services of Chief Justice Taft, who broke all precedents by participating in a
Congressional hearing, The hearing had begun when, quite unannounced, the Chief
Justice entered the room. Everyone present rose, and none was more surprised
than were the members of the Congressional Committee to find the Chief Justice
before them. Mr. Taft spoke briefly for New Haven and f or Hale. He then
withdrew, and the hearing was resumed at a high pitch of enthusiasm. Both bills
were reported out favorably, and ultimately the Fort Hale reservation was ceded,
for strategic reasons, to the State of Connecticut, rather than to the City of
New Haven, in recognition of the services of Hale to his country; while the
Lighthouse Point reservation, having no historic association to warrant its
cession without payment, was ultimately bought by the city. Nathan Hale Park
(for so the former tract was renamed), though the title is in the State, is
cared for and managed as a part of the New Haven Park System.

Though the success of these park projects was due to Mr. Seymour's efforts, he
was still greatly disappointed at the failure of his project to have New Haven
adopt city planning in a larger way, and he determined not to retire without one
further effort. He, therefore, again on his own responsibility, on March 3,
1924, petitioned the Board of Aldermen to bond the city f or the purchase of a
tract of eighty acres which adjoined the Lighthouse Point Reservation and which
included a relatively short but fine beach washed by unpolluted salt water.
After an intensive campaign of some months, in which he was ably assisted by
Bernard Greenberg, Esq., and the late much-lamented Frederick W. Campbell, both
then members of the Aldermanic Board, this project was put through. The
property is now known as Lighthouse Point Park.

The very first intimation that the city-improvement plan, proposed by Messrs.
Gilbert and Olmsted, was to include the cutting of an imposing street or
approach, leading from the railway station to the center of the city, to
intersect with Temple Street or College Street, caused an immediate rise in all
real estate valuations in the long neglected region through which such an
approach was planned to pass. These valuations had risen so far before the city
was prepared to take any action in this matter that the cost became prohibitive,
and that outstanding feature of the plan had to be abandoned.  However, the
necessity of a more direct route between the railway station and the city was so
evident that Mr. Frederick L. Ford designed the "Orange Street Extension," so
called, which involved the removal of the old armory and necessitated other
expensive purchases of realty. This route, as designed by Mr. Ford, has now been
executed and has already demonstrated its value, but is still seriously
handicapped by the projection into it of the building containing the showroom
and store of the New Haven Gas Light Company. The removal of this obstruction
must take place before the full advantage of this new route is manifest. This
improvement must be credited to the city-planning movement inaugurated by Mr.
Seymour.

Thus ended Mr. Seymour's career of almost twenty years devoted to city planning
for New Haven, but not his public activities. In 1907-08, Mr. Seymour was the
"prime-mover" in having the Yale School of the Fine Arts and the Peabody
Museum opened without charge to the public on Sunday afternoons, and the great
Newberry organ played for a restricted season on Sunday afternoons. These
privileges, which were ultimately granted, have been taken advantage of, year
after year, by throngs of people, and are still continued, with mounting
interest and attendance. Being tax-exempt, Mr. Seymour argued that the use of
these great instruments of pleasure and education would help to bridge the gap
between "Town and Gown" and it is believed that they have measurably answered
that purpose. Later appeals to the President and Fellows of the University to
open the Carnegie Swimming Pool to men during the summer months, when the
students were away, and to extend to the public the use of the University
Library, under restrictions, failed.

In the forepart of 1909, Mr. Seymour was the leading spirit in a campaign to
have the New Haven elms sprayed to get rid of the elm-leaf beetle pest and to
bring bef ore the community the advisability of placing the whole subject of the
care and replanting of trees under the direction of a superintendent of trees or
city forester. To this end, Mr. Seymour published in the issues of the //New
Haven Sunday Register// and //New Haven Sunday Union// of March 21st and 28th
and of April 4th, 1909, a comprehensive historic review of the elms, which for a
century had made the city world-famous as the "City of Elms." City Hall was
opposed to the appointment of a superintendent of trees, but resistance was
overcome, and on March 15, 1911, Mr. George Alexander Cromie, a graduate of the
Yale School of Forestry, class of 1910, received the appointment. With what
energy and judgment he filled the once, until he left it January 1, 1929, to
become Superintendent of University Planting, is well known. In the //New Haven
Sunday Union// of April 4th, 1909, appeared a highly-diverting cartoon by
Howard Freeman, in which Mr. Seymour, beset with gigantic beetles, was shown on
the top of a towering stepladder, belaboring an elm with a $10,000 feather
duster!

In 1904 Mr. Seymour subscribed $200 to a fund to repaint the North Church,
stipulating that the woodwork should be painted white, rather than again in
several contrasting shades of brown. Just before the actual painting was begun,
Mr. Seymour was besought by the committee to "cut the string" attached to his
subscription. This he firmly refused to do, on the ground, as he declared, that
he would not participate in the further disfigurement of David Hoadley's superb
design of a red brick fabric, with a belfry, frontispiece, and cornice of white
woodwork, but when a compromise was tendered him, under which the belfry was
to be painted white, he readily accepted it, knowing that if the community could
once see the incomparable belfry painted white, with dark louvres, the painting
of the frontispiece and cornice white would automatically follow, and it did.
Mr. Seymour also strenuously urged the removal of the paint from the beautiful
Flemish bond brickwork of the church, but that point the "First Citizen" would
not yield. However, much had been gained. At this time, Mr. Seymour was
permitted to direct the entire redecoration of the interior of the church, in
the vestibule of which he erected a handsome tablet to the memory of David
Hoadley, the architect and builder of the fabric.

With this success behind him, Mr. Seymour in 1909 opened a campaign for the
restoration of Center Church to its original exterior appearance. Though this
project was endorsed by Mr. Cass Gilbert, the architect; by Dr. Maurer, the
minister of the church; and by other high officials of the society, a
determined faction opposed the plan with a bitterness scarcely believable. Mr.
Seymour's substantial contribution in the form of a check was returned. The very
idea that an //interloper// should place hands upon Center Church was
intolerable! Mr. Seymour's unanswerable reply to these criticisms was that a
church or school or whatever, accepting exemption from taxation, became by that
act alone an object of public concern and the proper subject of criticism on the
part of each and every taxpayer. All of the churches on the Green stand there by
the sufferance of the town.

Happily, the opposition, unable to //finance// a reactionary plan to repaint the
woodwork and brickwork of the church in contrasting tones of gray, failed, and
in 1912, when the repainting of the church became imperative, Mr. Seymour's plan
of removing the paint from the brickwork and painting the woodwork white was
carried out. The result was a revelation to the community. No one had properly
seen Center Church as designed by Ithiel Town since 1845, when its superb
Flemish bond brickwork was first lost to view under a coat of paint. This new
gospel rapidly spread to Hartford where the paint was soon removed from the
brickwork of Bullfinch's Old State House, from the First Church, and so on. In
1912 Mr. Seymour placed a slate tablet in the vestibule of the church in memory
of Ithiel Town, and has very recently secured for the church his portrait by
Spencer, now hanging beside the tablet. In Mr. Seymour's career he has met with
much opposition, but none so bitter as that attending the removal of the paint
from the brickwork of Center Church. He hopes that it will not be long before
the paint is removed from the beautiful Flemish bond brickwork of the North
Church. In 1924-25 Mr. Seymour directed the redecoration of the meeting house in
Woodbridge.

Mr. Seymour's great interest in the ornamental wood and iron work of old houses
of the better class led him to secure for the New Haven Colony Historical
Society the Palladian window of the once-famous Dyer White house on the
northwest corner of Orange and Center streets; the fine staircase, front doors,
and some paneling, from the James Abraham Hillhouse mansion ( 1765), familiarly
known in greatly-disguised form as "Grove Hall"; and the superb wrought-iron
posts and railing which ornamented the entrance of the Nathan Smith house,
designed and built about 1816 by David Hoadley, on Elm street facing the Green,
later known as the "Edwards House." The staircase in question has been installed
in the new Historical Society Building, while the wrought-iron posts and railing
from the Nathan Smith house have been used in front of the building, designed by
J. Frederick Kelly. Mr. Seymour's great regret is that he was too late to secure
the exquisite portico, now one of the treasures of the Metropolitan Museum, of
the house designed and built about 1800 by David Hoadley for Judge Simeon
Bristol, which occupied the site of the Ives Memorial Public Library. It was
also Mr. Seymoor who began the agitation which led to the removal of the
pyramidal cap that so long disfigured Trinity Church, designed and built about
1812 by lthiel Town, on the New Haven Green; and it was through Mr. Seymour's
protracted efforts that the two so-called "'Branford Rooms," now installed in
the Yale School of the Fine Arts, were secured from the New Haven Water Company
when it demolished the famous Curtis-Rose house of about 1710 in North Branford.

Interested from boyhood in portraits and portrait painting, Mr. Seymour was the
"prime-mover" in having John W. Alexander, N.A., paint a portrait of Professor
John F. Weir for the Yale School of the Fine Arts on his retirement; in having
Mayor Chauncey Jerome's portrait painted by Herman Sodersten for the City Hall;
and the late Samuel Hemingway's portrait painted by Ernest L. Ipsen, N. A., for
the Second National Bank. He has presented a copy of Duche's portrait of Bishop
Samuel Seabury (Primus Episcopus Americanus), and a portrait of John C.
Calhoun, to the University, both now hanging in the great Dining Hall in the
Bicentennial Buildings.

In 1897 the late Mrs. Mary Russell Mann, of Branford, presented to Mr. Seymour
the original doors of Parson Russell's house in Branford -- the doors that gave
passage to the founders of Yale when they met and, according to tradition,
placed books upon the parson's study table, each saying, "I give these books for
the foundation of a college in this colony." Mr. Seymour presented the doors to
the University in 1901 and, now hung as the entrance of the "1742 Room" in the
new University Library, they are believed to be the earliest existing relics of
any Yale building.

Mr. Seymour's interest in history and in memorial tablets as works of art has
led him to erect several tablets on his own account. They include a tablet to
Captain Charles Churchill (by Frank Crawford Boardman), and one to Captain
Robert Wells IV (by Lee Lawrie) in the Congregational Meetinghouse in Newington
-- both of bronze; tablets to Captain Nathan Hale in Battell Chapel, to Ithiel
Town in Center Church, to David Hoadley in the United Church-all three of slate
designed by the late Henry Charles Dean; an engraved wrought-brass tablet to
Deacon Richard Hale, the father of Nathan Hale, in the Church at Coventry,
Connecticut; and with Lee Lawrie Mr. Seymour designed the tablet, executed in
slate, erected by the Church Society to Governor Simeon Baldwin in the United
Church, New Haven. Mr. Seymour was also the prime-mover in the erection of a
tablet to his friend, Professor Edward T. McLaughlin, in Battell Chapel, and
secured Russell Sturgis, Jr., to design the tablet.

A lifelong interest in Captain Nathan Hale induced Mr. Seymour to buy, in 1914,
the neglected and abandoned birthplace of the patriot in South Coventry in
Tolland County -- a stately farmhouse built in 1776 by Nathan's father, Deacon
Richard Hale, who incorporated in it a fragment of the actual birth house built
by him on substantially the same site in 1746. The farm contained three hundred
and two acres of which fifty were added to the acreage after Deacon Hale's death
in 1802. Mr. Seymour reconditioned the mansion with knowledge and taste,
gathered furnishings of Connecticut origin for it, including some pieces of
immediate Hale interest, such as Hale's army trunk. In order to protect the
property, Mr. Seymour bought in 1925 another farm on the opposite side of the
highway, with a house of about 1720 in which Hale's "good grandmother Strong"
lived and died. This house is now called "Northampton House," thus memorializing
that early group of settlers of Coventry, including the Strongs, who removed
there from Northampton, Massachusetts, to escape the menace of the Indians.
This old fabric has also been reconditioned and furnished. The present property
of nearly a thousand acres is now being managed on principles of practical
forestry under the direction of Mr. George A. Cromie. Apart from their historic
interest in connection with Hale, both of these homes are of marked interest to
the students of early Connecticut domestic architecture.

Mr. Seymour's interest in Nathan Hale also made him the "prime-mover" in the
erection in 1913 of a statue of Hale, who was of the Yale Class of 1773, on the
01d Campus of Yale College -- a sustained effort of sixteen years and "crowned"
only after many vicissitudes.  The statue was designed by Bela Lyon Pratt, and
near the Hale mansion in Coventry Mr. Seymour has erected a bronze replica of
it.

In 1925 the Federal Government, through Mr. Seymour's persistent efforts of
something over two years, issued a half-cent Federal stamp bearing the head of
Pratt's "Hale." Nearly three billion of these stamps have now been printed and
issued. In a very real sense, these stamps, freely circulating everywhere from
coast to coast, have made the nation "Hale-conscious." Mr. Seymour has
presented many framed life-sized photographs of the head and bust of Pratt's
"Hale" to schools, libraries, etc., throughout the State.

A collector nearly all his life, particularly of early New England furniture,
Mr. Seymour has not only furnished his house in New Haven and his two houses in
Coventry with antique furniture and household goods, but has on deposit in the
Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford an extensive collection of early pieces,
including many specimens of seventeenth century oak, as well as some painted
pine chests. It has been his aim to collect only pieces of Connecticut origin.
In the main he has specialized in pre-Revolutionary household things, and he is
regarded as no mean authority in that field. He has also on deposit in the
Atheneum a small collection of old silver, and in the Hale Mansion he has
brought together a consider- able collection of early Connecticut folk-pottery
(made in New London and Norwich), and a collection of the painted basketry of
the Mohegan Indians.

In 1931 Mr. Seymour presented to the town of Newington as a memorial to his
mother and her family, a tract of about twenty acres of farm land, to be used
primarily as a playground, the land being a fragment of the farm occupied by her
Churchill forbears since the early days of the Colony and including the site of
the mansion, which was built in 1761 by his great-great-grandfather and was
noted for the beauty of its highly-ornamented front doorway. This gift of land
in Newington was the outgrowth of Mr. Seymour's long-continued interest in New
Haven's recreational facilities in inside and waterfront parks, which he had
helped so much to increase.

Mr. Seymour traveled in England and Scotland in 1889, on the Continent in 1905,
and again on the Continent (by motor) in 1909 and in 1911. In 1900 he went with
a party headed by the late Prof. Charles E. Beecher, then Director of the
Peabody Museum, to witness the snake dance of the Moki Indians, and visited the
Grand Canyon of the Colorado, the Painted Desert, and the Petrified Forest. In
1901 he went around the world with the Hon. Gifford Pinchot, whose errand was to
secure material for a report to President Roosevelt on the forest resources of
the Philippine Islands. Arrived at Manila after crossing Asia on the newly-
opened Trans-Siberian Railway, they were the guests at the old palace of
Malacanan of the Governor General and Mrs. Taft. Mr. Taft placed his official
boat, the //Alava//, at their disposal, and they made an extensive tour of the
Islands, taking in Sandakan in Borneo as a side trip. They returned home //via//
Japan and the Hawaiian Islands. At that time, few persons had seen as much of
the Islands as Mr. Pinchot and Mr. Seymour saw on this trip. In Manila Mr.
Seymour renewed an acquaintance with Mr. Taft which was to grow into a close
lifelong friendship.

Mr. Seymour has found, as he often says, that "the way of the reformer is hard,"
calling, as it does, for continuous study, for constant sacrifice of time and
patience, and above all for a philosophical spirit to bear frustrations,
derision, and disappointments. Looking backward, he regrets most of all the
failure to realize what was an important feature of the improvement plan
advocated in 1907 by Messrs. Gilbert and Olmsted, the creation of a park-
bordered marginal highway extending along the harbor front of New Haven,
providing near access to the water from the center of the city, and a route
for east and west traffic that would have avoided the center of the city and
relieved congestion. One has but to look at a map of New Haven and note the
vacant acres back of the railway station, to realize what New Haven daily misses
in convenience of transportation, and how our citizens, although they live so
close to the sea, are deprived of the advantages and pleasure of it.

As little fruitful as Mr. Seymour's city and harbor improvement efforts were,
considering the time, energy and labor invested in them, and as compared with
his hope of benefits to proceed from them, if in reasonable measure realized, he
has at least the sustaining consciousness that he is on "the side of the
future."

As a member of the State Commission of Sculpture, Mr. Seymour some years ago
advocated memorials in the Capitol at Hartford to John Brown of Osawatomie and
to Harriet Beecher Stowe, both natives of Connecticut and both outstanding
contributors to the cause of human freedom. This proposition never got to the
public, and what the public reaction would have been is a matter of speculation
; but he mentioned the matter to Colonel Osborn, who said, "Until the pen drops
from my palsied fingers I will oppose in the columns of the //Journal-Courier//
a proposition to erect any memorial to John Brown in the Capitol at Hartford''
At the same time the late Professor Henry Augustine Beers said, "I will use my
pen as long as I can write to forward your proposition to erect a memorial to
John Brown in the Capitol. You remember that Emerson said, 'John Brown has made
the gallows as sacred as the cross.'"

The foregoing account of the author's public activities was prepared some years
ago for a different purpose, and it is included here at this time perforce
because, as the result of a shock suffered by the author two years ago, he has
been unable to go through his papers and files for the preparation of an account
of his abilities, which if written to-day would be far less detailed.
Nevertheless, he is now constrained to add some later items. One of them is the
purchase in Coventry of the Joseph Huntington Parsonage, built about 1764, in
which Nathan Hale was prepared for Yale College. Another is the erection, with
suitable inscriptions, of four granite markers of historical sites connected
with Nathan Hale and one marking the site of the first house built in Coventry.
Another is erecting a suitable monument in the town of Bolton to mark the
forgotten grave of Ralph Earl, the Revolutionary portrait painter. Still others
are the employment of an expert to recondition a number of early portraits in
the possession of the Connecticut Historical Society and the commission of a
well-known American artist to paint a portrait of his friend, Chief-Justice
Taft, for the Robing Room of the United States Supreme Court Building in
Washington.

Mr. Seymour was a member of the Mayor's committee to celebrate the Tercentenary
of New Haven and a member of the committee for the erection of a Cenotaph to
Theophilus Eaton, the first Governor of the New Haven Colony. During the
Tercentenary year he compiled and published a brochure entitled "Memorials of
Governor Eaton."  He has also prepared for publication a "Documentary Life   of
Nathan Hale," this at the suggestion many years ago of the late Professor Thomas
R. Lounsbury of Yale. At present he is preparing to erect at the Birthplace a
monument to his veteran riding horse, who died nearly a year ago, a horse so
highly educated, so great a gentleman, that he seemed deserving of a Latin
inscription, which has been prepared by a learned Latanist of Yale.

|  D M  |
|  THOMAS HOOKER BONES  |
|  1907-1937  |
|  EQUI BENE MERITI  |
|  GENERE NOBILIS DOCTRINA INSTITUTI VIRTUTIBUS ORNATI  |
|  INGENUI LIBERALIS HUMANI  |
|  S T T L  |
|  HOC MONUMENTUM PONENDUM CURAVIT  |
|  GEORGIUS DUDLEY SEYMOUR  |
|  MDCCCCXXXVIII  |

A list of the major portion of articles which Mr. Seymour from time to time has
published on early Connecticut architects and their work has been included in
the appendix to this history.

Mr. Seymour is a Congregationalist and in politics a Republican. He received the
honorary degree of M.A.   from Yale College in 1913. and the degree of L.H.D.
from George Washington University in 1921.

//Clubs// -- Dissenters, Graduates, Elizabethan, New Haven; Acorn, Connecticut
; Cosmos, Washington; Century, Coffee House, Yale, and Ends of the Earth, New
York.

Vice-president Connecticut Historical Society; member New Haven Colony Historical Society; honorary member Chicago, Mattatuck (Waterbury), and Wallingford Historical societies; member Board of Trustees, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; chairman State Commission of Sculpture; corresponding member American Institute of Architects; sometime (twenty-five years) member Board of Trustees of The Henry Whitfield State Historical Museum, Guilford; member Board of Trustees, Thomas Lee House, East Lyme; member Board of Trustees, Donald G. Mitchell Memorial Library, Westville; member Board of Managers of New Haven Dispensary; member of New Haven Commission on Zoning; member Committee on Restoration of the Glebe House, Woodbury (and first to urge it); member General Committee of the Yale Pageant (1916); chairman of Sub-Committee on Medals, Stamps and Coin, State of Connecticut Tercentenary Commission; member Committee for Building New Haven Public Library; member Committee on Cornelius Bushnell Memorial; chairman of Tablet Committee of the United Church; member General Committee on the Commemoration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Removal of Yale College to New Haven; sometime member New Haven Municipal Art Commission; member Jury for Selecting Design for Veterans' Home at Rocky Hill; member New Haven World War Memorial Committee; secretary, 1913-24, New Haven City Improvement Commission; member New Haven Harbor Development (State) Commission, and writer of its report dated October 1, 1922; for many years active member New Haven Chamber of Commerce; honorary member Connecticut Society of the Cincinnati; member Connecticut Society Colonial Wars (sometime secretary); member Connecticut Society Sons of the Revolution; honorary member Beaumont Medical Society; vice-president Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities; vice-president American Federation of Arts; honorary associate fellow of Berkeley College, Yale University; honorary member Phi Chi Chapter of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity; member Hiram Lodge, No.1, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; member Walpole Society; member City Hall Building Commission; member The American Friends of Lafayette; member New Haven County Bar Association; member The Yale Alumni Association of New Haven; chairman New Haven Municipal Art Commission, 1933; member Connecticut Fish and Game Association; member Mory's Association; member American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. 

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