Seth Kinman

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Business card portrait by Kinman, 1864

Seth Kinman (born September 29, 1815 in Uniontown, now Allenwood in Gregg Township , Union County , Pennsylvania , †  February 24, 1888 in Table Bluff , California ) was a California Forty-Niner , hunter in Fort Humboldt and an early settler in Humboldt County . Kinman was known for his hunting skills as well as his brutality towards the Indians . He claimed to have shot a total of over 800 grizzly bears and over 50 elk in one month alone . He was also a hotelier and bartender and was also known for playing the violin ( fiddle ).

Attracted public attention, Kinman appeared on the east coast of the United States as the stereotypical mountain man in Buckskins clothing, and sold business card portraits showing him and his famous armchairs. These chairs were made by Kinman from the antlers of elk and the skins of grizzly bears and presented to various presidents of the United States . Kinman chairs were given to Presidents James Buchanan , Abraham Lincoln , Andrew Johnson, and Rutherford B. Hayes . Kinman attended at least two funeral procession for Lincoln and claimed to have witnessed Lincoln's murder.

Life

Seth Kinman's father, James Kinman, operated a ferry across the West Branch Susquehanna River in central Pennsylvania, in what was then called Uniontown , now Allenwood in Gregg Township . Seth was born in Uniontown in 1815. In 1830 the family moved to Tazewell County , Illinois . In 1848 Seth Kinman ran the Eagle Hotel in Pekin on the Illinois River . The hotel was known less for its comfort than for Kinman's fiddle performance of The Arkansas Traveler .

In 1849, during the gold rush , he emigrated to California, where he worked as a gold prospector in the company of Pierson B. Reading on the Trinity River near what is now Douglas City . He then returned to Illinois for two years. In 1852 Kinman went back to California and moved in the Humboldt Bay area near what is now Eureka . Humboldt Bay had recently been rediscovered by prospectors looking for a faster and cheaper supply route. An early settlement in the area was also called Uniontown, but is now known as Arcata .

Kinmans Hotel and Bar building, 2011
Kinman's bar with three of its armchairs, 1889

Kinman began working as a hunter in 1853. He supplied US troops at Fort Humboldt . In Fort Humboldt he met the later President Ulysses S. Grant and George Crook , who would later become a general. According to tradition, he brought the first herd of cattle to Humboldt County at that time . Kinman lived in a variety of locations across the county, including houses near Ferndale and Bear River Ridge . In October 1858 he acquired 32 hectares of arable or pasture land, 1.6 kilometers east of what would later become the Table Bluff Light and about 16 kilometers south of Fort Humboldt. It was the first land acquisition in the Humboldt Land District created by a federal law of March 1858. Kinman later built a hotel and bar on the land.

Kinman was first known as a hunter, particularly as a grizzly bear hunter . California was then known for a large population of grizzlies. Kinman's son Calvin claimed they saw 40 grizzlies at once. In 1868, however, the last grizzly in Humboldt County had been shot. The Methodist bishop and writer Oscar Penn Fitzgerald met Seth Kinman, when he was on his way to deliver to one of his presidential chair. Fitzgerald recorded his impressions in an essay entitled The Ethics of Grizzly Hunting (" The Ethics of Grizzly Hunting "). He described Kinman as a drunkard who cruelly abused Indians and grizzly bears.

“His demeanor was a mixture of brutality, cunning, and good-naturedness. He was entirely animal. The wild life in the borderland had not purified this old sinner as it is imagined by writers who fantasize about such things from a distance. "

- Oscar Penn Fitzgerald

Kinman's brutality was also observed by James R. Duff, a Forty-niner like Kinman, who described him as a "declared enemy of the red man" who "shot an Indian as soon as he saw him." Kinman himself claimed to be an official Indian agent and had contacts with the Wiyot who were moving to a ranchería or reservation on Table Bluff , near Kinman's property. This happened after the 1860 Wiyot massacre on Indian Island and two other locations, with over a hundred Wiyot Indians murdered in their sleep. Kinman was apparently not one of the murderers, but described the massacre based on reports from both Wiyotes and white settlers in the 2010 book "The Seth Kinman Story", which he dictated.

During a storm on January 5th and 6th, 1860, Kinman received distress signals of the Northerner shipwreck in which 38 people were killed. Kinman tied himself to the shore and waded into the surf, rescuing numerous passengers. He was praised as a hero and rewarded with a Bible and free travel on the affected shipping line for life.

Presidential chair

Kinman's chair for President Lincoln

Inspired by choosing James Buchanan, who, like Kinman was from Pennsylvania, President Kinman created his first chair antlers of elk (in American English elk called) and brought him to Washington. Kinman presented his chair to the President after an introduction by Indian Representative James William Denver . The President presented Kinman with a rifle in return.

Kinman's delivery of an elk antler chair to President Abraham Lincoln on November 26, 1864 was captured by the artist Alfred Waud . It is the only known picture that shows Lincoln accepting a gift. The drawing shows Lincoln next to Kinman's chair examining his rifle, which Kinman called "Ol 'Cottonblossum" . Kinman also presented a fiddle made from the skull and rib of his favorite mule and played the instrument.

Delivery of Lincoln's chair, drawing by Alfred Waud

Five months later, Kinman took part in Lincoln's funeral procession in Washington. Kinman is said to have been in Ford's Theater the night of the attack and witnessed the murder. On April 26, 1865, the New York Times described Kinman as a participant in the New York City funeral procession:

“Much attention was drawn to Mr. Kinman, who was walking in full buckskin and fur hunting gear with a rifle shouldered. Mr. Kinman, as will be remembered, presented Mr. Lincoln some time ago with an armchair made of California wapiti and, continuing his acquaintance with him, is said to have had a fairly long conversation with him just the day before the murder. "

- New York Times

In the 1860s, numerous business card portraits of Kinman and his armchairs were made by Mathew Brady or in Brady's studio. Kinman sold these photographs in the Washington Capitol . He traveled the country and appeared in Buckskins as a "frontier" storyteller and fiddle player.

Kinman's masterpiece among his presidential chairs was presented to President Andrew Johnson on September 8, 1865.

“This one should surpass all his previous efforts and was made from two grizzly bears that Seth had caught. The four legs and claws came from a huge grizzly, on the back and sides it was decorated with huge claws. The armchair was soft and extremely comfortable, but its great peculiarity was that by pulling on a leash, the head of the monster grizzly bear with an open mouth popped out from under the seat, snapping lifelike and grinding his teeth. "

- Marshall R. Auspach

Johnson set up the chair in the White House library , in the Yellow Oval Room . On September 18, 1876, Kinman presented Governor Rutherford B. Hayes with an elk antler chair. Hayes became President of the United States shortly afterwards. This chair is on display today at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio .

Kinman spent his old age with his family in Table Bluff, where he continued to own a hotel and bar. In 1886 Kinman was preparing to send armchairs to President Grover Cleveland and former presidential nominee General Winfield Scott Hancock . He died in 1888 after accidentally shooting himself in the leg. Kinman was buried in Table Bluff Cemetery in Loleta . One of his grizzly bear armchairs and the mule bone fiddle were exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 . The Clarke Historical Museum in Eureka displays his buckskin clothes and moccasins, as well as a wooden box that Kinman owned.

Web links

Commons : Seth Kinman  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Seth Kinman. The Pacific Coast Nimrod who gives chairs to presidents (English) . In: New York Times , December 9, 1885, p. 10. Retrieved November 7, 2010. 
  2. ↑ A Buck-Horn Chair for the President (English) (PDF). In: New York Times , May 20, 1857, p. 2. Retrieved November 7, 2010. 
  3. ^ Historical Sketches of the Bench and Bar of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania ( English ) In: Lycoming Law Association . September 11, 2008. Retrieved November 13, 2010.
  4. ↑ a b c Chas. Howard Shinn: With the Humboldt Trappers . In: Outing . XIX, No. 2, October 1891, pp. 94-95. Retrieved November 25, 2008.
  5. ^ A b Dan L. Thrapp: Kinman, Seth . In: Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography: GO . University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln [etc.] 1991, ISBN 0-8032-9419-0 , pp. 785 ( Google Books ).
  6. ↑ a b Board of Supervisors, Humboldt County (Calif.): 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., 1904, pp. 12 ( Google Books ).
  7. ↑ a b Ferndale . Arcadia Publishing, 2004, pp. 14 ( Google Books ).
  8. ^ Carolyn Merchant: Green Versus Gold: Sources in California's Environmental History . Island Press , Washington, DC [etc.] 1998, ISBN 1-55963-580-0 , pp. 23 ( Google Books ).
  9. ^ A b Oscar Penn Fitzgerald: The Ethics of Grizzly Hunting . In: California Sketches . 4th edition. Southern Methodist Publishing House, Nashville, Tennessee 1880, p. 107–113 (English, archive.org [accessed July 25, 2016]).
  10. ↑ Quoted in: Louise McLean: The Discovery of Humboldt Bay as Described by a '49er to Louise McLean . In: The Overland Monthly . vol. 70, no. 2 , 1917, p. 137 ( Google Books ).
  11. ^ Seth Kinman: Seth Kinman's manuscript and scrapbook . Ed .: George Richmond, Richard H. Roberts. Ferndale Museum, Ferndale, Calif. 2010.
  12. ^ Library . Wiyot Tribe. Retrieved November 16, 2010.
  13. ^ William B. Seacrest senior, William B. Seacrest junior: California Disasters, 1812-1899: Firsthand Accounts of Fires, Shipwrecks, Floods, Epidemics, Earthquakes and Other California Tragedies . Quill Driver Books, Sanger, Calif. 2005, ISBN 1-884995-49-7 , pp. 85-88 ( Google Books ).
  14. ↑ Harold Holzer: "Tokens of respect" and "heartfelt thanks". How Abraham Lincoln coped with presidential gifts . In: Illinois Historical Journal . vol. 77, no. 3 . Illinois State Historical Society, 1984, p. 188 ( Illinois Historical Digitization Projects (PDF file; 2.7 MB)). Illinois Historical Digitization Projects ( Memento of the original dated February 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / dig.lib.niu.edu
  15. ^ Edward Steers Jr.: Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln . University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky 2005, ISBN 0-8131-2217-1 , pp. 274 ( Google Books ).
  16. ^ The Procession .; eight grand divisions, the spectators ... the California hunter ... (English) . In: New York Times , April 26, 1865, p. 1. Retrieved January 13, 2013. 
  17. ^ Richtmyer Hubbell, Marc Newman: Potomac Diary: A Soldier's Account of the Capital in Crisis, 1864-1865 . Arcadia Books, 2000, ISBN 0-7385-0471-8 , pp. 72 ( Google Books ).
  18. ↑ Marshall R. Auspach, The Lost History of Seth Kinman , 1947, quoted in: Bear in Mind Themes: Captivity and Extinction ( English ) In: Bear in Mind: The California Grizzly at Bancroft Library . University of California at Berkeley. 2004. Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  19. ↑ Yellow Oval Room ( English ) The White House Museum. Retrieved October 19, 2010.
  20. ↑ a b Two more of Seth Kinman's chairs (English) . In: New York Times , February 20, 1886, p. 2. Retrieved November 19, 2010. 
  21. ^ Object - Chair ( English ) Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  22. ^ Seth Kinman ( English ) In: Find a Grave . Accessed November 19.
  23. ↑ Bear in Mind Themes: Captivity and Extinction ( English ) In: Bear in Mind: The California Grizzly at Bancroft Library . University of California at Berkeley. 2004. Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  24. ^ Pamela F. Service, Raymond W. Hillman: Eureka and Humboldt County, California . Arcadia Publishing, Chicago, IL 2001, pp. 128 ( Google Books ).
personal data
SURNAME Kinman, Seth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Californian hunter
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Uniontown , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1888
Place of death Table Bluff , California