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| | last =Thrapp | first =Dan L. | title =Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography: G-O | | last =Thrapp | first =Dan L. | title =Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography: G-O | ||
| | publisher =University of Nebraska Press | year =1991 | page =785 | url =http://books.google.com/?id=hc35mM0PqSQC&q=Kinman#v=snippet&q=Kinman | | publisher =University of Nebraska Press | year =1991 | page =785 | url =http://books.google.com/?id=hc35mM0PqSQC&q=Kinman#v=snippet&q=Kinman | ||
| | doi = | isbn =0803294190, 9780803294196 }}</ref> was a California ], a hunter based in ], and an early settler in ]. He stood over |
| doi = | isbn =0803294190, 9780803294196 }}</ref> was a California ], a hunter based in ], and an early settler in ]. He stood over six feet tall and was known for his hunting prowess and his brutality toward bears and Indians. Kinman claimed to have shot a total of over 800 grizzly bears, and, in a single month, over 50 elk.<ref name="NYT1" /> He was a hotel keeper and a barkeeper, and was noted for his fiddle playing. | ||
| Known for his publicity seeking, Kinman appeared as a stereotypical ] dressed in buckskins on the U.S. east coast and selling ''cartes de visites'' of himself and his famous chairs. The chairs were made from ]horns and ] skins and given to ].<ref name="Old Buck" /><ref name="MLWH2">{{cite web | Known for his publicity seeking, Kinman appeared as a stereotypical ] dressed in buckskins on the U.S. east coast and selling ''cartes de visites'' of himself and his famous chairs. The chairs were made from ]horns and ] skins and given to ].<ref name="Old Buck" /><ref name="MLWH2">{{cite web | ||
Revision as of 16:23, 10 November 2010
| Seth Kinman | |
|---|---|
 Carte de visite of Seth Kinman in 1864 | |
| Born | (1815-09-29)September 29, 1815 Union County, Pennsylvania |
| Died | February 24, 1888(1888-02-24) (aged 72) Table Bluff, California |
| Resting place | Table Bluff Cemetery, Loleta, California 41°06′36″N 76°53′42″W / 41.110°N 76.895°W / 41.110; -76.895 |
| Occupation(s) | Hunter, hotel keeper |
| Known for | Presidential chairs |
| Signature | |
 | |
Seth Kinman (September 29, 1815 – February 24, 1888) was a California '49er, a hunter based in Fort Humboldt, and an early settler in Humboldt County. He stood over six feet tall and was known for his hunting prowess and his brutality toward bears and Indians. Kinman claimed to have shot a total of over 800 grizzly bears, and, in a single month, over 50 elk. He was a hotel keeper and a barkeeper, and was noted for his fiddle playing.
Known for his publicity seeking, Kinman appeared as a stereotypical mountain man dressed in buckskins on the U.S. east coast and selling cartes de visites of himself and his famous chairs. The chairs were made from elkhorns and grizzly bear skins and given to U.S. Presidents. Presidents so honored include James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Rutherford Hayes. He may have had a special relationship with President Lincoln, appearing in at least two of Lincoln's funeral corteges, and claiming to have witnessed Lincoln's assassination.
Early life
Seth Kinman's father, James Kinman, ran a ferry across the West Branch Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania, in an area then called Uniontown. (It is now Allenwood in Gregg Township, Union County.) Seth was born in Uniontown in 1815. In 1830 his father took the family and migrated to Tazewell County, Illinois.
By 1848 Kinman was operating the Eagle Hotel in Pekin, Illinois, on the Illinois River. The hotel was known less for its comforts than for Kinman's rendition of the fiddle tune Arkansas Traveler.
A traveler came off a steamboat one day and went to the Eagle Hotel. There had been a little western "scrimmage" at the "Eagle" the night before, and though things had not been put in order, the proprietor, Seth Kinman, was sitting in front of the door, playing his favorite tune, the "Arkansaw Traveler", with the greatest self-satisfaction.
The stranger, stopping, said to Seth: "Are you the proprietor here?" Seth, without resting his bow, replied- "Wall, I reckon I be, stranger". "Do you keep tavern?"
"Of course I do: I keep tavern like h—l," said Seth, fiddling away with all his might, "Just pile in: hang your freight on the floor, and make yourself at home." "The boys," continued Seth, "have been having a little fun, but if there is a whole table or plate in the house, I'll get you some cold hash toward night." The stranger didn't like this peculiarly western reception, so took his departure, leaving Kinman still enjoying his violin.
Life in California
Kinman migrated to California in 1849 during the great Gold Rush and worked as a gold miner in Pierson B. Reading's party on the Trinity River near present day Douglas City. He then returned to Illinois for two years. In 1852 he returned to California and explored the Humboldt Bay area, near present day Eureka, California. Humboldt Bay had been recently rediscovered by gold miners seeking a faster and cheaper route to transport supplies. An early settlement in the area was also named Uniontown, but is now known as Arcata. During this period, miners and their suppliers were often flush with gold, but had little to spend it on.
On Christmas, 1852 Kinman was hired to perform on fiddle at the then exorbitant amount of $50, despite his lack of musical training. As described by a fellow '49er:
Seth Kinman, the noted hunter and antler chair-maker, and myself were tendered fifty dollars each to preside as the orchestra for a Christmas ball at Uniontown in 1852. Kinman's repertoire consisted mainly of an alternation of the "Arkansaw Traveler" and "Hell on the Wabash" and mine was little more varied or pretentious. He responded. My conscience has not yet reached that level of elasticity.
— David Rohrer Leeper
In 1853 he started working as a hunter, feeding U.S. troops in Fort Humboldt. While at Fort Humboldt he met future president Ulysses S. Grant, and future General George Crook. Sources disagree on whether he brought his family to California from Illinois in 1852 or 1854. According to tradition, about this time, he brought the first herd of cattle to Humboldt County. Kinman lived in several places in the county, including houses near Ferndale and Bear River Ridge. He bought 80 acres (320,000 m) of farm or ranch land one mile (1.6 km) east of the future Table Bluff Lighthouse in October 1858, and about 10 miles (16 km) south of Fort Humboldt. This was the first purchase of land in the Humboldt Land District, which was established by an Act of Congress in March, 1858. He later built a hotel and bar on the site.
Kinman made his name first as a hunter, especially as a hunter of grizzly bears. California was noted for its large population of grizzlies. Seth's son Calvin claimed that they once saw 40 grizzlies at one time. But by 1868, the last grizzly in Humboldt County had been killed. While Kinman was on his way to deliver one of the presidential chairs, he met Methodist bishop and writer Oscar Penn Fitzgerald on a California steamboat. Fitzgerald recorded his impressions in the sketch The Ethics of Grizzly Hunting.' He presented Kinman as a drunkard who cruelly abused Indians and grizzly bears.
His countenance was expressive of a mixture of brutality, cunning, and good humor. He was a thorough animal. Wild frontier life had not sublimated this old sinner in the way pictured by writers who romance about such things at a distance.
— Oscar Penn Fitzgerald
Kinman's brutality was also noted by James R. Duff, a fellow '49er, who described him as "an avowed enemy of the red man, ... (who) shot an Indian on sight." Kinman himself claimed to be an official Indian Agent, and was involved with the Wiyot Tribe who moved to a rancheria or reservation on Table Bluff, near Kinman's property. Their move followed the 1860 Wiyot Massacre on Indian Island, and two other sites, when over one hundred Wiyot were murdered in their sleep. Kinman was apparently not one of the murderers, but in the book he dictated, "The Seth Kinman Story," he gives hearsay accounts of the massacre from both Wiyots and white settlers.
During a gale on the night of January 5–6, 1860, Kinman was alerted by distress signals from the shipwreck of the Northerner, in which 38 people perished. Kinman tethered himself to the shore and waded into the surf to save many passengers. He was hailed as a hero and awarded a Bible and free life-time passage on the line.
Presidential chairs
Inspired by the election of James Buchanan, a fellow Pennsylvanian, to the presidency, Kinman built his first elkhorn chair and brought it to Washington.
I kill deer and elk meat up in Humboldt County. My range is from Bear Valley into Oregon. This winter I killed considerable meat so I thought I would take it easy and set about to make this cheer with a view of sending it on to Washington for Old Buck. After I got it finished, though, the boys up in our parts thought it enough to travel on; so I thought I would try and go on with it to Washington myself, leaving my mother and four children behind, and started with nothing but my rifle and powder horn. Nobody has yet sot in this cheer, and never shall till after the President.
— Seth Kinman
On May 26, 1857, after an introduction from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs James W. Denver, Kinman presented the chair to Buchanan. The President was so pleased by the present that he bought Kinman a rifle in return.
Kinman's presentation of an elkhorn chair to President Abraham Lincoln on November 26, 1864 was recorded by artist Alfred Waud, the only known picture of Lincoln's accepting a gift. The drawing shows Lincoln's examining Kinman's rifle, which he called "Ol' Cottonblossum." Kinman also presented a fiddle made from the skull and a rib of his favorite mule and played the instrument.
Much to the amusement of Lincoln and other spectators, he played 'Essence of Old Virginia' and 'John Brown' on the bones of the mule. Lincoln said that if he could play the fiddle he would ask him for it, but since he could not, the fiddle would be better off in Mr. Kinman's hands.
— Stanley Kimmel.
Five months later, Kinman marched in President Lincoln's funeral cortege in Washington. Kinman was allegedly in Ford's Theater the night of the assassination and witnessed the murder. He escorted Lincoln's body on its way to burial. On April 26, 1865, the New York Times described Kinman in the funeral cortege in New York City: "Much attention was attracted to Mr. Kinman, who walked in a full hunting suit of buckskin and fur, rifle on shoulder. Mr. Kinman, it will be remembered, presented to Mr. Lincoln some time ago a chair made of California elk-horn, and continuing his acquaintance with him, it is said, enjoyed quite a long conversation with him the very day before the murder."
Many cartes de visite photographs of Kinman and his chairs were taken during the 1860s by Matthew Brady or at Brady's studio. Kinman sold these photographs in the U.S. Capitol. He toured the country, performing in his buckskins as a frontier story teller and fiddle player.
Kinman's tour de force in presidential chairs was presented to President Andrew Johnson on September 8, 1865.
This was intended to surpass all his previous efforts, and was made from two grizzly bears captured by Seth. The four legs and claws were those of a huge grizzly and the back and sides ornamented with immense claws. The seat was soft and exceedingly comfortable, but the great feature of the chair was that, by touching a cord, the head of the monster grizzly bear with jaws extended, would dart out in front from under the seat, snapping and gnashing its teeth as natural as life.
— Marshall R. Auspach
Johnson kept the chair in his White House library, the Yellow Oval Room. On September 18, 1876, Kinman presented an elkhorn chair to Governor Rutherford Hayes of Ohio, who was soon to become the President of the United States. The chair is now displayed in the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio.
In his later years, Kinman lived in Table Bluff, California with his family, where he owned a hotel and bar. In 1886, Kinman was preparing to send chairs to President Grover Cleveland and former presidential candidate General Winfield Scott Hancock. He died in 1888 after accidentally shooting himself in the leg. He was interred at Table Bluff Cemetery in Loleta, California. One of his grizzly bear chairs and the famous mule bone fiddle were displayed at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The Clarke Historical Museum in Eureka displays his buckskin clothing, complete with beaded moccasins, as well as a wooden chest he owned.
Further reading
- Marshall R. Auspach, The Lost History of Seth Kinman, 1947
- The Seth Kinman Story, 1876, handwritten manuscript dictated by Kinman, with additions and comments by H. Niebur, pp. 319, available in the Andrew Genzoli Collection, Humboldt State University Library (Catalog entry)
References
- ^ Thrapp, Dan L. (1991). Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography: G-O. University of Nebraska Press. p. 785. ISBN 0803294190, 9780803294196.
{{cite book}}: Check|isbn=value: invalid character (help) - ^ "SETH KINMAN.; THE PACIFIC COAST NIMROD WHO GIVES CHAIRS TO PRESIDENTS". New York Times. December 9, 1885. p. 10. Retrieved November 25, 2008.
- ^ "A Buck-Horn Chair for the President" (PDF). New York Times. May 20, 1857. p. 2. Retrieved June 15, 2009.
- "Seth Kinman". Mr. Lincoln's White House. The Lincoln Institute. Retrieved November 25, 2008.
- "Historical Sketches of the Bench and Bar of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania". Lycoming Law Association. September 11, 2008. Retrieved November 26, 2008.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - To Springlake near the Mackinaw River according to Kinman, J.S. (1907). "Interesting Illinois Letter". Hunter-trader-trapper, Volume 15,Issue 2. F.J. and W.F. Heer: p.29.
{{cite journal}}:|page=has extra text (help) - Centenary Committee (1949). The Pekin Centenary, 1849-1949 (PDF). Pekin, Illinois: Pekin Association of Commerce. pp. 9, 123.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - Bates, William H. (1916). Souvenir in the History of Early and Notable Events in North West Territory Illinois and Tazewell County (PDF). Pekin, Illinois: Bates Press. p. 15.
- ^ Shinn, Chas. Howard (1891). "With the Humboldt Trappers". Outing. XIX (2): 94–95. Retrieved November 25, 2008.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - Leeper, David Rohrer (1895). The Argonauts of 'forty-nine: Some Recollections of the Plains and the Diggings. J.B. Stoll. p. 135.
- ^ Ferndale Museum Staff (2004). Ferndale. Arcadia Publishing. p. 14. ISBN 0738528900.
- Humboldt History
- ^ Board of Supervisors, Humboldt County (Calif.) (1904). Humboldt County Souvenir: Being a Frank, Fair and Accurate Exposition, Pictorially and Otherwise of the Resources Industries and Possibilities of this Magnificent Section of California. Times Pub. Co. p. 12.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Merchant, Carolyn (1998). Green Versus Gold: Sources in California's Environmental History. Island Press. p. 23. ISBN 1559635800.
- Fitzgerald, Oscar Penn (1909). Library of Southern Literature: Compiled Under the Direct Supervision of Southern Men of Letters. Martin and Hoyt Company. pp. 1631–1635.
- cited in McLean, Louise (1917). "The Discovery of Humboldt Bay as Described by a '49er to Louise McLean". The Overland Monthly. 70 (2): 137. Retrieved November 26, 2008.
{{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - "Library". Wiyot Tribe. Retrieved September 22, 2009.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - Seacrest, William B., Sr. (2005). California Disasters, 1812-1899: Firsthand Accounts of Fires, Shipwrecks, Floods, Epidemics, Earthquakes and Other California Tragedies. Quill Driver Books. pp. 85–88. ISBN 1884995497.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Singleton, Esther (1907). The Story of the White House. The McClure company. p. 45.
- Holzer, Harold (1984). "Tokens of Respect" and "Heartfelt Thanks" How Abraham Lincoln Coped with Presidential Gifts (PDF). p. 188.
- Stanley Kimmel, Mr. Lincoln's Washington, p. 157, cited in"Seth Kinman". Mr. Lincoln's White House. The Lincoln Institute. Retrieved November 25, 2008.
- Steers, Edward, Jr (2005). Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. University Press of Kentucky. p. 274. ISBN 0813191513.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - "The Procession.; EIGHT GRAND DIVISIONS THE SPECTATORS...THE CALIFORNIA HUNTER" (PDF). New York Times. April 26, 1865. p. 1. Retrieved June 16, 2009.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - Hubbell, Richtmyer (2000). Potomac Diary: A Soldier's Account of the Capital in Crisis, 1864-1865. Arcadia Books. p. 72. ISBN 0738504718.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - Marshall R. Auspach, The Lost History of Seth Kinman, 1947, cited by "Bear in Mind Themes: Captivity and Extinction". Bear in Mind: The California Grizzly at Bancroft Library. University of California at Berkeley. 2004. Retrieved November 25, 2008.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - "The White House Museum". Yellow Oval Room. Retrieved September 18, 2009.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ "TWO MORE OF SETH KINMAN'S CHAIRS". New York Times. February 20, 1886. p. 2. Retrieved November 25, 2008.
- "Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center". Object - Chair. Retrieved September 18, 2009.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - "Seth Kinman". Find a Grave. Retrieved November 25, 2008.
- "Bear in Mind Themes: Captivity and Extinction". Bear in Mind: The California Grizzly at Bancroft Library. University of California at Berkeley. 2004. Retrieved November 25, 2008.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - Service, Pamela F. (2001). Eureka and Humboldt County, California. Arcadia Publishing. p. 128. ISBN 0738518727, 9780738518725.
{{cite book}}: Check|isbn=value: invalid character (help); Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help)
External links
- Patent 46365, Issue date: February 1865, Seth Kinman IMPROVEMENT IN ARM-SUPPORTERS FOR RIFLEMEN
- Seth Kinman at Find a Grave