Program

NYS Historic

Subject

People

Location

903 Broadway, Darien Center, NY 14040, USA

Lat/Long

42.900513, -78.419269

Grant Recipient

Darien Disciple Church

James E. Seaver was born on October 15, 1787. It is possible he was the son of Captain William Sever (1763-1828) and Mary Everett (1765-1815) (Findagrave.com).

It is thought that he came to Darien, NY (then called South Pembroke) in 1816. He came to the town “a very poor man, but had a stock of medicine in his pill-bags”. His tombstone has “Doctor” engraved on it, and the Genesee County Gazetteer from 1890 describes him as one of the towns first doctors, though there are no licensing records from that time. He had at least two sons, one of whom was listed in the 1890 Gazetteer as James W. Seaver, of Byron, NY.

James Seaver is best known for having interviewed Mrs. Mary Jemison and written a narrative about her life. The book is a well-known “captivity narrative” from the early years of American colonization and still taught in American literature classes today. The book was published in 1824, a year after his three-day interview with Mrs. Jemison. It details her life captured as a child and raised with the Seneca Native American tribe, and later choosing to live among them.

James Seaver’s health became poor in the years before his death, preventing him from working and causing his family to be “destitute”. He passed away in Darien, NY on January 25, 1827, and is interred in the Broadway Cemetery (“Gazetteer and Biographical Record of Genesee County, NY”, 1890, p. 73, 403).

See also our four markers for the Gardeau Tract, marking the four borders of the reservation set aside for Mary Jemison during the Big Tree Treaty of 1797 at Geneseo, NY. Today some of these lands make up Letchworth State Park.