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[Linda Anderson]

(01-19-2015 03:37 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  I am not sure what to think of this. The quote is what the newspapers thought. Did Seward himself ever comment on his feelings towards Olive Risley? It would have been legitimate to re-marry so long after his wife's death, even church wouldn't consider this unfaithful (though I'm not sure if I personally would), and he wouldn't have been the frist to take a much younger wife. Also I wonder if she sort of filled the gap Fanny left and reminded him of her? Olive was born in the same year as Fanny.

I don't know if Seward ever commented publicly on his feelings towards Olive but they wrote affectionate letters to each other. Seward was devastated by Fanny's death and I'm sure that explains a lot of his feelings for Olive. I don't have a problem with the large age difference. Seward was lonely and Olive traveled the world with him, took his name when he adopted her and shared in his inheritance when he died.

John M. Taylor in William Henry Seward: Lincoln's Right Hand states that after Seward adopted Olive, "Seward rewrote his will, dividing his estate evenly among his three sons and Olive Risley Seward.

"...At least there would be no May-and-December marriage, and no young bride to inherit the bulk of Seward's estate."

Taylor quotes another Seward biographer, Glyndon G. Van Deusen, as saying that he (Van Deusen) had it on the "best authority" that letters revealing what the Sewards really thought of Olive and her father "were destroyed by relatives before the Seward Papers were given to the University of Rochester."