|
Seth Kinman (September 29, 1815 – February 24, 1888) was an early settler of Humboldt County, California, a hunter based in Fort Humboldt, a famous chair maker, and a nationally recognized entertainer. He stood over 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 also a hotel keeper, barkeeper, and a musician who performed for President Lincoln on a fiddle made from the skull of a mule. 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. His autobiography, dictated to a scribe in 1876, was first published in 2010 and is noted for putting "the entertainment value of a story ahead of the strict facts." His descriptions of events change with his retelling of them. Contemporary journalists and modern writers were clearly aware of the stories contained in the autobiography, "but each chooses which version to accept."〔Robert H. Roberts, 2010, Transcriber's Forward to Seth Kinman's Manuscript and Scrapbook, pp, i-ii, Ferndale Museum.〕 ==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, now called Allenwood in Gregg Township, Union County. James also was a millwright and an inn-keeper, whose forebears were Quakers from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Seth's mother, Eleanor Bower Kinman, was of German descent whose family lived in Reading, Pennsylvania.〔Carranco, p. 33〕 Seth was born in Uniontown in 1815. While in Pennsylvania, he learned to read and write, "I could form good letters with a pen but I never learned to spell well."〔quoted in Carranco, p. 33〕 In 1830 his father took the family and migrated to Tazewell County, Illinois.〔〔To Springlake near the Mackinaw River according to 〕 In his autobiography, Seth stated that his father fought in the Blackhawk War in Illinois in 1832.〔Autobiography, p. 2.〕 He also claimed that his father and Abraham Lincoln fought together in the war, became friends afterward, and that Seth met the future president during Lincoln's circuit-riding days in Illinois.〔Carranco, p. 34〕 At about the same time the Kinmans acquired a rifle, known as "Old Cotton Bale," that Seth kept throughout his life. The rifle had a long barrel and "is supposed to have killed Gen'l Peckenham" at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.〔Autobiography, p 3-4〕 With some skepticism, Anspach relates a long history of the rifle, gleaned from an 1864 local newspaper story on Kinman, of a renegade Kentucky sniper shooting the British general while carrying on a conversation with American General Andrew Jackson.〔 Seth spent ten years working in his father's mill in Illinois, sawing lumber and grinding grain. After his father's death in 1839 he sold the mill and tried farming. He married Anna Maria Sharpless, of Catawissa, Pennsylvania, in 1840 and they had five children together: James (1842), Carlin, who is sometimes called Calvin (1846), Austin (1847), Ellen (1849), and Roderick (1851).〔〔 Anna Maria and two of their sons, James and Austin, died during the winter of 1852-53, while Seth was in California.〔 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Seth Kinman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|