This is the home Seward lived in throughout his entire adult legal, political, and diplomatic career. Seward served as governor of New York and represented the state in the United States Senate. He was an early and fierce opponent of slavery, even though his father profited from slave labor. He was a founder of the Republican Party, and the frontrunner in the 1860 race for his party’s nomination.
Seward’s home, built in 1816, is seen in the top photo. It was his father-in-laws house. Six presidents have visited it.
William Seward was born in Florida, NY, about sixty miles north of New York City. He moved to Auburn and practiced law with Judge Elijah Miller. In 1824 he married the judge’s daughter Frances. The judge told Seward that the couple had to agree to live with him in order to obtain his blessing. Seward agreed, no doubt assuming the judge would not live long. The judge survived for two more decades.
The grounds of the house have beautiful plantings:
The carriage house and stable:
The first thing you see when you go inside the house is this plaster bust of Seward:
Here is the entry hallway to the house with Michele descending the beautiful stairway. You will note many paintings and drawings on the wall. All of these were owned by the Seward family. The family owned the house from the 1820s until 1950, when it became a museum, so a lot was kept since the family never moved. All the furnishings, china, pots and pans, etc were owned by the Millers and Sewards. The only things not original are the rugs and wallpaper.
The first room that you tour is on the right off the entrance. This formal parlor was a place to receive esteemed guests (and politicians whom Seward wanted to win over.) You can see a portrait of Sewards wife, Frances nee Miller on the rear wall.
Frances Seward was raised in the Quaker faith and a committed Abolitionist from her earliest years. She studied at the Emma Willard School in Troy New York along with William Seward’s sister. They met through Seward’s sister and William’s decision to move to Auburn was apparently influenced by his desire to court Frances.
This portrait of Frances was painted by the regionally known Henry Inman in 1844 when she was 39.
On the left side of the fireplace is this portrait of William Seward, also painted by Inman. It was painted in 1843:
The first president to visit the Seward House was John Quincy Adams. Seward was the leading Whig in New York State:
Thurlow Weed was the Whig boss of Upstate New York. Frances and William met him when their carriage broke down in Rochester on the way to Niagara Falls. Weed became Seward’s mentor in the arts of politics. While Seward can sometimes seem like a visionary idealist, he was closely tied into the machine politics of his day. Weed would later run the Republican machine in New York State and mislead Seward into thinking that he had the 1860 Republican presidential nomination all sewn up.
From the parlor, you are taken into the library. There are over 2,000 books from the Seward family in the house:
Seward placed a bust of Lincoln in the library and turned it to face out looking at his garden through a window.
The Seward family displayed a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation under these lamps in the library. The copy shows edits and suggestions from Seward:
In the library is a photo of William Seward with Fanny, his only daughter. Many of you know her as one of those attacked by Lewis Powell during the attempt to assassinate Seward in 1865.
Fanny was Seward’s reading companion. When she died in 1866 at the age of 21, he enclosed her books behind glass so that he could recall their time together in the library. It is one of the most complete collections of an adolescent girl’s books from 19th Century America.
Here is Frances Seward’s portable desk. She wrote her letters to her husband and other correspondence on it.
The books that belonged to Seward are pretty amazing in themselves:
Next we were brought into the formal dining room. All of the China and servers and tableware are from the Sewards in the 19th Century:
Here is Russian Imperial China. Our guide said that this china was only available to the Russian Royal family and that this was a gift from the family of the czar, She also said that it was a complete set and the largest set in the United States.
This room is a treasure trove of stuff used to serve and eat food:
The table was set for 12, but the table could be expanded and set for 24, which meant that the Seward’s had gigantic sets of china.
The guide told us that in addition to the pieces on display, the staff frequently found stuff in the attic that they did not know was there. The big table is set with china from Seward’s son that was only uncovered in the last few years.
Seward served 12 course meals and with each course went a glass of wine. Guests were expected to take a couple of sips of wine, not guzzle it. Seward used these meals to help control Whig and later Republican politics in New York State.
This is an alcove in the dining room.
Seward received many gifts, this one from Southeast Asia. It is a Buddha from Burma.
The drawing room or ladies parlor is filled with lots of momentos. More was more. The gigantic painting on the right by Thomas Cole of the Upper Falls of the Genesee at Letchworth belonged to William Seward. Cole was the first great Hudson River School painter. A few years ago the Seward House found out that the painting is worth over a million dollars and panicked because of inadequate security. The foundation tried to sell it, which generated a huge backlash. Seward helped run the railroad over the Genesee Falls. The bridge is still there 150 years later.
The painting of Fanny Seward was done after her death. The down-turned morning glories symbolize that it is posthumous. Her left hand is ghost hand. It was painted by German immigrant artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, who painted the famous Washington Crossing the Delaware.
Feels like the family might show up for tea.
The stairway and upstairs hallway are lined with the family’s canes and diplomatic portraits:
This is the globe Seward used at the State Department. It is about 4 feet tall. It appears in the painting by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze of the Alaska Purchase.
Lincoln on the right and Seward upper left.
The room Frances’s father occupied after Seward moved in:
More pics from Judge Miller’s room:
Modern plumbing from the late 19th Century and early 20th.
Next we went into the nursery. Seward had six children, including one adopted child. When you look at the furniture, it looks pretty ordinary until you realize everything in this room was sized for a little boy or girl. Most of the furniture is three feet tall.
I stood normally and took this photo of some of the furniture to give you a sense of how tiny it is.
A child’s bed and a doll’s cradle.
Seward House has a wonderful collection of dolls dresses used by William’s daughter and tiny tea sets.
Doll house furniture from the 1850s:
More from the nursery
This cool little theater set was a personal favorite of mine.
This desk was presented to Seward by New York City’s Common Council. I was one of the desks in use at Federal Hall in Manhattan when George Washington was inaugurated there.
This is the master bedroom, although it is decorated with items mostly from Seward’s son and daughter in law.
Two of Seward’s sons served in the Union Army. William Jr. was an officer in the 9th NY Heavy Artillery. He fought at Cold Harbor and was wounded at Monocacy in 1864. He was promoted to Brigadier General on Sept. 13, 1864 and commanded a brigade in West Virginia. He was also commander at Fort Foote. You can see my tour of the fort here.
Augustus Henry Seward was a West Point graduate (34th out of 38). He spent most of the Civil War as a paymaster rising to the rank of colonel. Here is the portable desk he used.
Some of the gear from the two military sons is on display. I only took pics of a few items, but it is all meticulously preserved.
There is a room in the house devoted to the Seward Assassination Attempt. Lewis Powell, shown here after capture on the Montauk, was a Confederate soldier who became part of John Wilkes Booth’s secret operations cell in Washington. On April 14, 1865, as Booth was assassinating Lincoln, Powell went to Seward’s house in Washington to deliver “medicine” to Seward. The Secretary of State was convalescing and Powell said he come from Seward’s doctor to show him how to take his medicine. This persuaded Seward’s butler William Bell to allow him in. Powell went to the third floor but Seward’s son Frederick, suspicious of Powell, told him Seward was asleep. Unfortunately Fanny came out of her father room and told them that Seward was awake.
Powell then tried to shoot Frederick, but the gun misfired, and smashed him in the head with the butt of his revolver. Fred was knocked unconscious. Powell threw Fanny out of the way and stabbed Sewards in the face and neck. A split deflected some of the blows. Powell was then confronted by Seward’s son Augustus who wrestled with him as well as Sgt. George Robinson. Powell ran into the street screaming “I’m mad.”
In the assassination room are several momentoes of Lincoln, including the appointment of Seward as Sec. of State signed by Lincoln.
After Lincoln’s funeral, the Lincoln family sent Seward a frame with pressed flowers from the president’s casket.
After Lincoln’s death, Seward served as Secretary of State for Andrew Johnson. There is an Alaska room at the house to interpret the purchase of that territory in Seward’s Folly. I will get to that later. Seward’s wife died in 1865 and his daughter Fanny died the following year at the age of 21. Seward turned away from the Liberal and Radical wings of his party and became very associated with President Andrew Johnson.
While a decade earlier Seward had pushed legislation giving black men the right to vote in New York, when the issue came up in D.C. he opposed it. He was similarly compliant in Johnson’s weak Reconstruction policies.
This aspect of Seward’s career, lasting several years, is not interpreted at the house, a real shortcoming.
Seward tried his hand as a political strategist in 1867 and 1868, hoping to get Johnson the Republican nomination. This failed. There were rumors that he might serve Grant, but by this time the Johnson faction was so out of favor among Republicans that Seward was probably never under serious consideration. He returned to Auburn, which he would use for the next four years as a base for travels.
He created a small office for himself in the servants area of the house. You can see it in the photo below.
Seward’s desk is not visible on the tour, but I got to sneak a picture of it in.
The small and unremarkable office is on the tour because Seward died here. On October 10, 1872 Seward was working in this room when he began to have trouble breathing.
Seward’s family gathered around him and they sought his last words as he lay on this couch in the office. Seward reportedly said “Love one another.”
This is the Old Kitchen at Seward’s house. It was part of the original house, but was superseded by later additions and no longer used regularly by the 1850s. Frances, who was a member of Auburn’s abolitionist circle, used it as a place where fugitive slaves could rest.
Even when Seward was Sec. of State, and prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, Frances sheltered two black refugees heading to Canada via Buffalo and Niagara Falls here in the kitchen.
So, I skipped the Alaska Room. I visited during the 150th Anniversary of the Alaska Purchase engineered by Seward during a dysfunctional presidency while Congress was trying to impeach Andrew Johnson! I told the story of the Purchase in another thread, so I won’t go into it here, but if you visit the House you will find that this is one of the achievements of Seward’s which gets the most attention. After Seward retired, he went to Alaska and the house has quite a number of objects he received as gifts. Michele, who studied Anthropology at William and Mary, really enjoyed seeing these 150 year old artifacts. The one artifact that was missing was Leutze’s painting of the Treaty. It was on loan from the house to the Alaskan state museum for the 150th. All we got to see was this lousy reproduction!
Some of the objects from indigenous peoples:
Seward was happy to accept gifts from the First Peoples of Alaska, but apparently he did not reciprocate, leading to the erection of a “Shame Pole”:
Above Seward’s New York carriage is his Alaskan kayak:
More on the kayak:
Seward bought an original oil painting of the battle between the Alabama and Kearsage. Not the Manet!
The painting’s information:
I only took pictures of a small fraction of what was hanging on the walls. I liked this one:
And with that, we left the house and went out to sit in the gazebo.
From the recent biography of Seward on why he moved to Auburn:
[Seward] traveled north and west, visiting several towns before deciding upon Auburn, and joining the law practice there of Elijah Miller, a retired judge. Years later, Seward advised a young man that it was best “to settle in a county town, in the county, not in the great cities, and better to settle in a new county
than in an old one.” This explains well why he himself selected Auburn. Both Auburn and Cayuga County, of which it was the county seat, were relatively new and rapidly growing. Auburn was about 150 miles west of Albany, on the turnpike between Albany and the booming western part of the state. Auburn was not on the route of the Erie Canal, which was under construction along an east-west line about fifteen miles to the north. But Seward was not yet a canal enthusiast, so this probably did not matter much to him. Far more important were the many small businesses in and about Auburn, including sawmills, carpenter shops, cabinet
cabinet makers, flour mills, and cloth factories. Auburn was an eager, expanding, entrepreneurial town, just the place for a young lawyer to start life.
Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (Kindle Locations 310-318). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
Stahr writes of Seward and abolition:
[Whig boss Thurlow] Weed would have disapproved even more strongly of the measures Seward was taking to help former and fugitive slaves. The most famous former slave in the United States, Frederick Douglass, wrote Seward to thank him for financial support for his controversial newspaper. Seward’s friend and neighbor John Austin, the Universalist minister, recorded in his diary an instance in which Seward suggested that he should collect money to “help forward a poor fugitive slave from the South to Canada.” Austin did so, then “went over to the Governor’s and gave it to the poor fugitive,” who was hiding there. In another instance, while Seward was at home in Auburn and Frances away, he reported to her that “the underground railroad works wonderfully. Two passengers came here last night.” Seward sold a small house in Auburn to Harriet Tubman, a fugitive slave active in helping other slaves escape. He offered Tubman very easy terms—only $25 down and $10 per quarter thereafter—and he did not object when she failed to make even these payments. Some have suggested that Seward helped Tubman and other fugitives for political reasons, to strengthen his
position among abolitionists. It seems far more likely that he helped fugitives in spite of the legal and political risks, especially among moderate and border state voters. It was one thing to argue on the Senate floor that the Fugitive Slave Law should be repealed; it was quite another thing to commit a federal crime by sheltering fugitives in one’s own home.
Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (Kindle Locations 2881-2884). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
Stahr write of Seward and the Know Nothings:
In New York, many of the Know Nothings were strongly opposed to Seward. A friend warned Weed in August that “secretly the K.N. are pledged against you and Seward and Abolitionism—so much for their hostility to the Pope!” A few weeks later, Greeley wrote to a friend that “in this state Know-Nothingism is notoriously a conspiracy to overthrow Seward, Weed and Greeley, and particularly to defeat Gov. Seward’s re-election to the Senate.” Seward himself recognized the threat but at first dismissed it. During a Senate debate on a bill to make it easier for farmers to acquire western homesteads, in which he argued against an anti-immigrant provision, Seward read aloud from a Boston nativist newspaper. Another senator asked him whether these were the principles of the Know Nothings. “I know nothing of the Know Nothings,” Seward responded, to laughter. A few weeks later, commenting on the upcoming New York election, he wrote to a friend that “the ‘Know-Nothing’ bubble is the only occasion of alarm, and that alarm threatens only me. To that I am indifferent.”
Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (Kindle Locations 2731-2740). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
A few things about the House:
One of the workman on the house was Brigham Young. He did the work on the parlor fireplace.
Dinner was at Dinosaur Barbeque in Syracuse:
Not everyone was impressed by Seward. Gideon Welles disliked him, according to Seward’s biographer:
Seward, according to Welles, was arrogant, ambitious, meddlesome, unpleasant.
Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (Kindle Location 10030). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
More from the biography on post-mortem criticism of Seward:
Henry Adams, in his essay on the secession winter, published early in the twentieth century, praised Seward’s management of the crisis, saying that he “fought, during these three months of chaos, a fight which might go down in history as one of the wonders of statesmanship.” Henry’s brother Charles, however, concluded in his published memoir that Seward was “an able man, a specious and adroit, and a very versatile man; but he escaped being really great.” Seward pretended to be a philosopher, Charles Adams wrote, but his philosophy “was not the genuine article.” He was instead, “as men instinctively felt, more of a politician than a statesman.” Charles Dana, the former assistant secretary of war, writing at about the same time as Adams, disagreed strongly, finding that Seward had “the most cultivated and comprehensive intellect in the administration” and also “what is very rare in a lawyer, a politician, or a statesman—imagination.”
Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (Kindle Locations 10035-10042). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Ed
The biography’s summation on Seward as a statesman:
Was Seward a statesman? He was an important governor of New York, in part because of what he did in building canals and railroads, but especially because of his defense of the disadvantaged: immigrants and
their children, free blacks and slaves. When he moved to Washington in 1849 as senator, Seward immediately established himself as the national leader of those who opposed the extension of slavery into the western territories. Although he is often called an abolitionist, he was not one: he did not share the intense moral outrage of the abolitionists, nor did he advocate an immediate end of slavery. Rather, Seward believed that slavery should disappear gradually, through the actions of slaveowners and southern state legislatures, a more practical approach than those of either the northern abolitionists or the southern extremists. He also believed, right up to
the eve of the Civil War, that there would be no war over slavery. He was wrong in this belief, and wrong in his prediction that slavery would end peacefully, but he nevertheless deserves substantial credit for building the national consensus in favor of limiting and ending slavery.
Stahr, Walter. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (Kindle Locations 10052-10060). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
2 thoughts on “William Seward House: Photo Tour of the Home of Lincoln’s Secretary of State”