Parley W. Seamans

Notes:

P. W. SEAMANS, retired farmer, was born in Woodstock, Conn., in 1816, and reared in Steuben County, N. Y., and in the fall of 1858 came to Kansas, making claims on Sections 20 and 29, Rock Creek Township. On this farm he planted Seamans' Grove, one of the first in Nemaha County, visible for many miles in either direction, and the land-mark for the host of over-land travelers, who soon began to make such claims upon his hospitality, as to encourage him to enlarge his cabin to a fair-sized house, and build a stone stable forty feet long. While living with his wife and children in his board roofed, floorless and windowless house, a party of eight travelers, not liking his slender accommodations, pushed on one cold night and nearly froze to death on the open prairie, trying to find Seneca, then the nearest inhabited point to the West. His place was popular for years thereafter, and was known all over the west as Seamans' Grove, which name it still bears, though he sold the property in 1865. He then lived on a farm at Albany, until his final retirement to Sabetha in 1881. He married in Steuben County, N. Y., Phoebe Blakeslee, who died in 1878, leaving three children. The present Mrs. Seamans' maiden name was Sarah Russell, of Seneca County N. Y. She married Benjamin Force, who died in New York State, leaving two children - David A. Force, of Detroit, and Lizzie E., now Mrs. Blakeslee, of Elmira, N. Y.

Parley married Sarah Russell about 1880. Sarah (daughter of Ebenezer Russell and Sarah Mead) was born in Jan 1816 in Seneca County, New York; died on 10 May 1903 in Sabetha, Nemaha County, Kansas; was buried in Albany Cemetery, Sabetha, Nemaha County, Kansas, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]