1. Seth Kinman was an early settler of Humboldt County, California, a hunter based in Fort Humboldt, a famous chair maker, and a nationally recognized entertainer.
43 Facts About Seth Kinman
1. 2.
Seth Kinman was a hotel keeper, saloon keeper, and a musician who performed for President Lincoln on a fiddle made from the skull of a mule.
3.
Seth Kinman 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.
4.
Seth Kinman spent ten years working in his father's mill in Illinois, sawing lumber and grinding grain.
5.
Seth Kinman married Anna Maria Sharpless, of Catawissa, Pennsylvania, in 1840 and they had five children together: James, Carlin, who is sometimes called Calvin, Austin, Ellen, and Roderick.
6.
Seth Kinman, without resting his bow, replied: "Wall, I reckon I be, stranger".
7.
On Christmas, 1852 Seth Kinman was hired to perform on fiddle at the then exorbitant amount of $50, despite his lack of musical training.
8.
Seth Kinman, the noted hunter and antler chair-maker, and myself were tendered fifty dollars each to preside as the orchestra for a Christmas ball at Uniontown in 1852.
9.
Seth Kinman's repertoire consisted mainly of an alternation of the "Arkansaw Traveler" and "Hell on the Wabash" and mine was little more varied or pretentious.
10.
Seth Kinman lived in several places in the county, including houses near Fern Cottage and a dairy farm on Bear River Ridge.
11.
Seth Kinman later built a hotel and bar on the site.
12.
Seth Kinman made his name first as a hunter, especially as a hunter of grizzly bears.
13.
Seth Kinman presented Kinman as a drunkard who cruelly abused Indians and grizzly bears.
14.
Seth Kinman's countenance was expressive of a mixture of brutality, cunning, and good humor.
15.
Seth Kinman tethered himself to the shore and waded into the surf to rescue passengers.
16.
Seth Kinman was hailed as a hero and awarded a Bible and free life-time passage on the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's ships.
17.
Seth Kinman collected "Indian artifacts" including scalps, which he claimed to have taken himself.
18.
Seth Kinman had terrible relations with the Wiyot Tribe who continue to live on Table Bluff, near his farm, at Table Bluff Reservation.
19.
Seth Kinman has not been specifically identified as one of the murderers.
20.
Seth Kinman displayed his "curiosities" including an elkhorn chair, mounted grizzly bears, several fiddles, and scalps, and gave a lecture.
21.
Seth Kinman took a ten-year-old Native American boy, named Burtch or Burtchfield, with him on this trip, but Burtch died in December, 1864.
22.
Seth Kinman said that he took the boy on the trip because he had killed both of Burtch's parents.
23.
Seth Kinman may have displayed his chairs at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876.
24.
Seth Kinman first used the large number of elkhorns shed near his farm every year to create a fence.
25.
Seth Kinman arranged free passage on the ship Golden Age to Panama, then to New York, and finally to Washington.
26.
Wozencraft, on May 26,1857, after an introduction from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs James W Denver, Kinman presented the chair to Buchanan.
27.
Seth Kinman took two chairs on his 1864 trip to the East Coast for use in exhibitions.
28.
Seth Kinman was allegedly in Ford's Theater the night of the assassination and witnessed the murder.
29.
Seth Kinman escorted Lincoln's body on its way to burial as far as Columbus, Ohio.
30.
Seth Kinman claimed to have paid Brady $2,100 in one three-month period for photos at 8 cents apiece, which calculates to an unlikely amount of over 26,000 photographs.
31.
Seth Kinman sold these photographs, among other places, in the US Capitol.
32.
Seth Kinman toured the country, performing in his buckskins as a frontier story teller and fiddle player.
33.
On September 18,1876, Seth Kinman presented an elkhorn chair to Governor Rutherford Hayes of Ohio, who was to become the President of the United States.
34.
Seth Kinman later gave a chair constructed of bearskin and other bear body parts to Hayes's vice-president William A Wheeler.
35.
In 1876, Seth Kinman dictated his memoirs, but they were not published until 2010.
36.
In 1886, Seth Kinman was preparing to send chairs to President Grover Cleveland and former presidential candidate General Winfield Scott Hancock.
37.
Seth Kinman died in 1888 after accidentally shooting himself in the leg.
38.
Seth Kinman was interred at Table Bluff Cemetery in Loleta, California, in his buckskin clothing.
39.
Herrick bought Seth Kinman's traveling museum collection of 186 items, including at least two of his famous chairs, and displayed them in San Francisco in 1893.
40.
Seth Kinman then took the collection to Chicago to display them at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, where she reportedly sold the individual items.
41.
The Ferndale Museum displays several Seth Kinman items, including another of his buckskin suits.
42.
At least two of Seth Kinman's guns are believed to have survived and have been exhibited on video.
43.
Seth Kinman modified the pistol, trimming the hammer and adding a front blade site made of horn or bone.