Welcome

[Trudy Krisher]

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for your warm welcome and your comments on my book about Fanny Seward.

Yes, Susan, I wish it could have been longer, too. It was 600 pages (!) in manuscript, and naturally publishers were leery. I am hoping that I can publish journal articles at some point using the material I had to leave out.

Eva, Fanny's education is explored in the book, and she was definitely encouraged to have political views. Her views on abolition were strong, but she had largely a literary, not a political sensibility.

Linda, Fanny does not mention Powell anywhere in her diaries other than in a general way in referring to the attackers as fiends and villians. In keeping with her character, her whole focus was on her family. Because her mother was so devastated by the attack and her brother and father's health so precarious, it's understandable that her energies were focused on healing them. My take on Mrs. Seward's final illness is that her health had been precarious for a long time prior to her return to Washington to help her husband after the carriage accident; the cascade of tragic events that followed simply sapped her remaining strength. I never found a "diagnosis" of the actual cause of her death; in fact, that's a topic for someone's dissertation: an examination of Frances Seward's medical history with attention to how much was physiological and how much psychological.

The warm welcomes are much appreciated. Be patient with my forum absences, as I spend time mostly writing and am not a particularly active forum participant on any venue.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thank you very much for your information and reply, Ms. Krisher, and for taking time to do so!

[BettyO]

Quote: Fanny does not mention Powell anywhere in her diaries other than in a general way in referring to the attackers as fiends and villains.

Thanks so much for the clarification, Ms. KAs you probably know, Dr. Verdi wrote an article (copied in the NY Sun July 25, 1873), in which he gives an indication of Fanny's gentle nature by stating that he accompanied Fanny aboard the monitor in order to identify Powell as the man who attacked her family. The girl refused to participate in that she was afraid that if she made an error in the identification, that she would cause Powell's death.

[Linda Anderson]

Thank you, Ms. Krisher, for your response. Fanny did devote herself to her family to the detriment of her own health but that was who she was like you say. I wish Secretary Seward had retired to Auburn after Powell's assault so Fanny could have gotten away from the house where every room reminded her of Powell but Seward was a restless, ambitious man so that wasn't going to happen.

It must have been so painful for Fanny to confront Powell, Betty, and yet she would not identify him on the monitor.

When you say Mrs. Seward's health is "a topic for someone's dissertation," Ms. Krisher, do you mean that someone is already writing it or that it would be a good topic for future research? I think Mrs. Seward was a very lonely and no doubt angry woman and that certainly would have affected both her mental and physical health. Her husband was very rarely home with her in Auburn.

I am still waiting for your book to be delivered. Next time I am going with Amazon Prime.

[Linda Anderson]

The book finally came in today and naturally I went to the description of Powell's assassination attempt on Seward. I was happy to see that Ms. Krisher writes that Fred Seward first opened his father's door thereby letting Powell know the location of Seward's room (if Powell didn't know already from the maid), not Fanny as some other authors have mistakenly written.

I was fascinated to learn that Harriet Tubman had a premonition "like a portent straight from Macbeth" [Macbeth again!] of Fanny's death.

"According to Sarah Bradford's biography, at the time of Fanny's death Tubman had reportedly seen 'a chariot in the air, going south, and empty, but soon it returned, and lying in it, cold and stiff, was the body of a young lady of whom Harriet was very fond, whose home was in Auburn, but who had gone to Washington with her father.' Terrified, Tubman 'ran to the house of her minister, crying out: 'Oh, Miss Fanny is dead!' Chillingly, word of Fanny's death has just been received."

I don't see the scene when Fanny refused to identity Powell on the monitor (although Verdi's account is included in the bibliography) so I have included a reference to it here. Ms. Krisher, did you come across any accounts of Fanny's reaction to Powell's execution?

This is Dr. Verdi's account from the article "The Assassination of the Sewards," The Republic, Vol I, from March to December 1873. p. 289. Google Books.

"The scene was a solemn one-too solemn for man to utter a sound; a silence, broken only by the hissing wind and the surging waves, pervaded the whole ship. It was almost a weird transformation from a mysterious power.

"Miss Fanny was hanging on my arm. Did I feel a quiver? Probably I did, for I gently drew her from the painful scene. Conscientious even at this trying moment, she could not identify the man; her identification, she thought, might be his death. She had only seen him by a dim light as if a frightful vision. That is all she said."

[LincolnToddFan]

Linda, can you or Trudi answer a question that I have about the Seward marriage? I've read that they were close, but on the other hand they mostly lived apart. I know that she called him "Henry".

Another thing that has always baffled me is the story of Charles Sumner going to the Seward house on the morning after the attack and finding Mrs. Seward sitting dazed on the staircase. She speaks of her fear that her son Frederick was dying, but is silent on the subject of her horribly mutilated husband.

Any ideas?

[Susan Higginbotham]

(01-17-2015 12:43 AM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Another thing that has always baffled me is the story of Charles Sumner going to the Seward house on the morning after the attack and finding Mrs. Seward sitting dazed on the staircase. She speaks of her fear that her son Frederick was dying, but is silent on the subject of her horribly mutilated husband.

Any ideas?

Perhaps since Dr. Verdi (love his name) had pronounced Seward out of danger the night of the attack, her son's uncertain condition (wasn't he comatose at the time?) was uppermost in her mind?

[Eva Elisabeth]

When Seward bought the townhouse in 186, most of his family came to live there in May, but Frances and Fanny stayed in Auburn.

Frances was said having lived most of the time there. At the assassination she suddenly "pops up" in Washington. When did Frances and Fanny come to Washington? Was it due to the carriage accident? Did Frances die in Washington or in Auburn? If in Auburn, when did she leave Washington? (Did Fanny accompany her?)

[Susan Higginbotham]

Fanny was in the carriage when her father had his accident (she recounts it in her diary); she spent quite a bit of time in Washington. Frances came to Washington after the accident.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks, Susan! That Fanny, too, was in the carriage was new to me! I remember reading the horses bolted, and Seward jumped off in a corner (or did he fall out off the carriage?). What about Fanny? And what about the driver?

[Susan Higginbotham]

(01-17-2015 10:34 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Thanks, Susan! That Fanny, too, was in the carriage was new to me! I remember reading the horses bolted, and Seward jumped off in a corner (or did he fall out off the carriage?). What about Fanny? And what about the driver?

Seward jumped out. Here is Fanny's description of the event:

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?p...&Print=456

[Gene C]

Love her comment about Stanton. That would have been a sight to see.
(thanks for the link, Susan)

[Eva Elisabeth]

Yes, thanks for the link, Susan!!!

[Linda Anderson]

(01-17-2015 08:13 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  When Seward bought the townhouse in 186, most of his family came to live there in May, but Frances and Fanny stayed in Auburn.

Frances was said having lived most of the time there. At the assassination she suddenly "pops up" in Washington. When did Frances and Fanny come to Washington? Was it due to the carriage accident? Did Frances die in Washington or in Auburn? If in Auburn, when did she leave Washington? (Did Fanny accompany her?)

Eva, Seward leased the Old Clubhouse from owner Augustus Stoughton for the eight years that he was the Secretary of State. Frances rushed to Washington when she received news of her husband's carriage accident on April 5.

I agree with Susan that Frances' mind would be on her son since Seward was pronounced out of danger very quickly but Fred's condition was still very precarious.

Toia, Seward was called "Henry," his middle name, by his family when he was growing up so Frances just continued the practice.

As for the Sewards' marriage, I would have to read a lot more about them to have a better opinion about it. I would like to know more about Frances' childhood and her relationship with her father who insisted that she and Seward live in his house to take care of him after they were married.

Frances seems to me to have suffered from an anxiety disorder which manifested itself in frequent headaches, sensitivity to light and noise, colds, fevers and various pains. Patricia Carley Johnson writes that Seward "... suspected, however, that a good portion of her difficulty was her own fault, and he refused to go along with her obsession for homeopathic medicine." Maybe someone can chime in here about the mental health care that women received in the 19th century.

Frances wanted her husband home with her but Seward would have been miserable in Auburn. He seems to have led a very fulfilling life in Washington without her, though.

Here's a link from the Seward House Museum to a lovely portrait of Frances, taken in 1844, the year Fanny was born.

http://sewardhouse.org/gallery/frances-seward-by-inman/

[L Verge]

I started reading the book this evening and finished about fifty pages. I am thoroughly enjoying learning so much about a little girl that previously has just floated through some of the volumes that I have read about the Lincoln assassination and the Civil War years in Washington, D.C. I suspect I am going to give it an A+ at the end, just as I did the American Queen and Kate Chase.

I agree with Linda that Mrs. Seward may have suffered from anxiety disorder, which can cause people to think one is a hypochondriac. From just these few chapters, I suspect that Frances Seward was coddled by her father and expected the same from a husband. When she acquired an extrovert for a husband, I wonder if her feigning illness (knowingly or unknowingly) led to her chronic "illnesses" in order to try and get that coddling?

Mrs. Seward was certainly very active in social issues of the day, especially in her concerns for the welfare of black Americans. She must not have been too sickly to work in that field. In fact, Ms. Kircher points out that she wanted reforms and emancipation to come much faster than even her husband and that was a bone of contention between them,