A File in the Online Version of the Kouroo Contexture (Approximately 1% Has Been

THOREAU’S CLASSMATE JOSEPH GALES SEATON

For whatever this is worth, it has been alleged that the parents of Joseph Gales Seaton (William Winston Seaton and Sarah Weston Gales Seaton of Washington DC, intimate friends of Daniel Webster) early on emancipated their black slaves of their own volition and assisted as many as desired in colonizing themselves in Africa, in effect freeing a greater number of black Americans “than all of the Abolitionists of the North had ever done up to the time of the Emancipation Proclamation of the President.” It would of course be fascinating, here, to be able to compare actual numbers of human beings — but this source has not provided us with that sort of detail. Exactly how many slaves did these slavemasters manumit and when? Exactly how many of their manumitted slaves chose to go to Liberia, and how did their trans-Atlantic fares get paid, and what sort of life did these unwanted Americans then encounter in Liberia? HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON

1857

February 9, Monday: Territorial Governor John White Geary requested military protection against the Kansas Territory’s gunslinging assassins. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

Joseph Gales Seaton, one of Henry Thoreau’s classmates at Harvard College, died in his parents’ home in Washington DC after a lingering illness (we do not know what that illness was, but the presumption for this period would have been that it was consumption, the final stage of tuberculosis).

By this point the Gosse family had moved permanently from London to St Marychurch, Devon (Philip Henry Gosse refused to use the “St” and even gave his address as Torquay so as not to have anything to do with the “so-called Church of England”). He soon became the pastor and overseer of the Plymouth Brethren there, at first meeting above a stable but shortly, under Gosse’s preaching and peacemaking, in finer quarters — which he perhaps himself financed.

Treatment with ointments had done nothing to stop Emily Bowes Gosse’s breast cancer. On this day the suffering wife and mother breathed her last, entrusting her husband with their child Edmund Gosse’s salvation. In the months following Emily’s death, the grieving husband would struggle diligently with a manuscript that he obviously was considering to be a great intellectual breakthrough. Gosse considered that he alone was able neatly to resolve the seeming contradiction between the age of the earth as revealed in Holy Scripture and the age of the earth as discovered by such contemporary geologists as Charles Lyell. The argument derived from HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON the inherent nature of any instantaneous creation ex nihilo. In any such instantaneous creation, there would of necessity be the relicts of a previous existence that had actually not transpired. If mature trees were created in an instant, for instance, rather than slowly growing from seeds into saplings and in the successive seasons into mature trees, then their trunks would contain instantaneously produced tree rings, one ring for each year — and these were year rings marking years which actually had never transpired. “Omphalos” being Greek for “navel,” and the navel being the scar left by the falling off of the umbilical cord, Gosse was arguing that the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, had had no natural need for navels. They had not been born of a mother, but instead, had been created by God! Nevertheless Adam and Eve were complete human beings, and a navel is part of a complete human being, and therefore God must have brought them into existence complete with navels just as He must have created trees with growth rings marking seasons that had in fact never existed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON Gosse pointed out that the fossil record we discover encased in the rocks –even such fossils as coprolites– might also seem to be evidence of years that had never actually existed. To create the rocks of this planet Earth, God must have created it with such fossils already in position within them. The theorist’s friend, the novelist Charles Kingsley, would comment that he had read “no other book which so staggered and puzzled” him — but that he was simply not prepared for the conceit that God had “written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind.” God the Liar? –Give us a break, it is Satan rather than God who is the father of all lies! Journalists would snigger at the idea that God had hidden fossils in the rocks, and point out that He 1 must have been tempting geologists to infidelity. OMPHALOS: AN ATTEMPT TO UNTIE THE GEOLOGICAL KNOT would sell so poorly that its publisher would rebind it under the new title CREATION “in case the obscure one had had an effect on sales,” before in 1859 giving up and disposing of most of the edition by selling it to a dealer in waste paper. THE GEOLOGICAL KNOT

[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR FEBRUARY 9th]

February 12, Thursday: Croquefer, ou Le dernier des Paladins, an operetta by Jacques Offenbach to words of Jaime and Tréfeu, was performed for the initial time, by the Bouffes-Parisiens of Paris.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk arrived in Havana from New-York aboard the steamer Quaker City, for a concert tour of Cuba.

On page 3 of the Fayetteville Semi-Weekly Observer of Fayetteville, North Carolina appeared the following entry: DIED, On Monday last, in Washington city, at the residence of his father, after a lingering illness, GALES SEATON, in the 40th year of his age, son of W.W. Seaton, Esq.

Joseph Gales Seaton was the son of William Winston Seaton (1785-1866) and Sarah Weston Gales Seaton (1790-1863). Surviving siblings were Josephine Seaton, Julia Winston Seaton Munroe, and Malcolm Seaton. The body would be placed in Plot R57/169 of the Congressional Cemetery of the District of Columbia. He had been a classmate of Henry Thoreau in 1837 at Harvard University.

Feb. 12. 7.30 AM. — The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being - 6° now. Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes, before the rear half of its body is limber. Perhaps they were revived last week, when the thermometer stood at 52 and 53. To Worcester. I observe that the Nashua in Lancaster has already fallen about three feet, as appears by the ice on the trees, walls, banks, etc., though the main stream of the Concord has not begun to fall at all. (It is hardly fallen perceptibly when I return on the 14th. Am not sure it has.) The former is apparently mostly open, the latter all closed. When I skated on the l l th I saw several pretty large open spaces on the meadow, notwithstanding that the boys had begun to skate on the meadow the 10th and it had been steadily growing colder, and the ice was on the 11th 1. If I myself were to do any sniggering in regard to this controversy, I would not be sniggering at Gosse (for he was merely the messenger who came to us pointing out some factoids that should always have been just obvious). I would be sniggering at the unworldly ignorance of the folks who had originally ginned up this origins story, or perhaps sniggering at the unworldly ignorance of the folks who had come to parse this origins story as involving literally only seven days of earth time — the folks who had brought us into such an absurd flight of fancy as “instantaneous creation.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON from two and a half to three inches thick generally. These open spaces were evidently owing to the strong wind of the night before, and which was then blowing, but I neglected to observe what peculiarity there was in the locality. Perhaps it was very shallow with an uneven bottom. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON

1864

Isaac Flagg graduated from Harvard College as poet of his class. He edited THE HELLENIC ORATIONS OF 2 DEMOSTHENES (Boston).

Joseph Palmer’s NECROLOGY OF A LUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 1851-52 TO 1862-63 (Boston: J. Wilson and son, 1864, 544 pages):

1837. — MANLIUS STIMSON CLARK died in Boston, 28 April, 1854, aged 36. He was son of Rev. Pitt Clark, of Norton (H.C. 1790), where he was born 17 October, 1816; was a highly respected lawyer in Boston. 1837. — GALES SEATON died in Washington, D.C., 9 February, 1857, aged 39. He was son of William W. Seaton, and was born in Washington, 27 July, 1817. He passed through his preparatory studies for admission into Harvard College under the instruction of the faculty of Georgetown College. On graduating, he selected the law as his profession; and repaired to the University of Virginia, where he prosecuted his legal studies with assiduity and success. He was admitted to the bar, but was not long in discovering that he had given his nights and his days to the study of that, as a science, which his mental habitudes and literary tastes rendered distasteful as a pursuit; and, abandoning the profession of the law, he became the proprietor and editor of the Raleigh (N.C.) “Register,” in which station he continued several years. He afterwards went to Europe, where he resided some time. While there, he was intrusted by the administration of President Taylor with a confidential commission, which he discharged in a manner highly creditable to himself, and satisfactory to the Secretary of State, — the late John M. Clayton. Of polished manners and commanding presence, without fear and without reproach, shrinking instinctively from all that was base in act or indecorous in thought and word, he was, in all respects, a true gentleman. In every relation of life, he was remarkable for a singular combination of modesty and self-reliance. To the inevitable ills of life he opposed the firmness of manhood with the submission enjoined by Christianity; and, amid the consolations and hopes of the latter, his mortal life slowly and calmly ebbed away, until the waiting spirit dropped the tabernacle of the flesh to take on the robes of immortality.

The HARVARD CLASS BOOK described Henry Thoreau in terms of his Jersey and Scot ancestry: David Henry Thoreau died in Concord, Mass., 6 May, 1862, aged 44 years. He was son of John and Cynthia (Dunbar) Thoreau, and was born in Concord, 12 July, 1817. His father, who was a pencil- maker, son of John and Jeannie (Burns) Thoreau, was born in Boston. His grandfather came from St. Hélier, on the Island of Jersey, and was of French origin. A Burns left property in Sterling, Scotland, to his wife, the said Jeannie Burns, and said it was worth attending to; but the papers to obtain it, though three attempts were made, never reached Scotland. This was about fifty years ago. His grandfather had a brother Philip 2. Another son of Wilson Flagg would be following along in a subsequent Harvard class. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON in the Island of Jersey. he was a cooper; but business was dull; and he shipped as a sailor on board a vessel in which John Adams went to France, in the American revolution. He came to this country about 1773. After the termination of the war, he went into business at No. 45, Long Wharf, Boston, in a very small way, in company with a Mr. Phillips, under the firm of Thoreau and Phillips. He accumulated a large property, and removed to Concord, where he died of consumption about one year afterwards, in consequence of a cold caught in patrolling the streets in Boston, in a heavy rain in the night, when a Catholic riot was expected, about 1801. His first wife died not long before he did; and he married a Miss Kettle, of Concord, sometimes spelled Kettell, by whom he had no children. Mr. Thoreau’s mother was daughter of Asa and Mary (Jones) Dunbar and was born in Keene, N.H. Her mother belonged to the Jones family of Weston. Her father, Rev. Asa Dunbar (H.C. 1767), was a minister in Salem, and afterwards a lawyer in Keene, an eminent freemason; died 22 June, 1787, aged 42 years, and was buried with masonic honors. Young Thoreau was fitted for college at Concord Academy by Phineas Allen (H.C. 1825). While in college, he kept school six weeks in Canton, and boarded with Orestes A. Brownson. They studied the German reader together very industriously, and talked philosophy till eleven o’clock, nights. Thoreau became sick, and was obliged to leave his school. This was in his junior year. After graduating, he taught the public school a few weeks; then a private school in Concord two or three years. Not long afterwards, he spent six months as a private tutor in the family of William Emerson (H.C. 1818), on Staten Island, N.Y. For two years at one time, and one year at another, he was a member of the family of Ralph Waldo Emerson (H.C. 1821) in Concord. With the exception of the six months at Staten Island, he resided constantly in Concord, leading chiefly an agricultural and literary life; supporting himself by his own hands, being a pencil-maker; often employed as a painter, surveyor, and carpenter. Nearly every year, he made an excursion on foot to the woods and mountains in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and other places. For two years and two months continuously, he lived by himself in a small house or hut of his own building, about a mile and a half from Concord village. He was well known to the public as the author of two remarkable books, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” published in 1849; and “Walden, or Life in the Woods,” published in 1854. These books have never had a wide circulation, but are well known to the best readers, and have exerted a powerful influence on an important class of earnest and contemplative persons. He led the life of a philosopher, subordinating all other pursuits and so- called duties to his pursuit of knowledge, and to his own estimate of duty. He was a man of firm mind and direct dealing; never disconcerted, and not to be turned, by any inducement, from his own course. He had a penetrating insight into men with whom he conversed, and was not to be deceived or used by any party, and did not conceal his disgust at any duplicity. As he was incapable of the least dishonesty or untruth, he had nothing to hide; and kept his haughty independence to the end. He was never married. HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON

1887

John Healy Heywood’s Unitarian publication OUR INDIAN MISSION AND OUR FIRST MISSIONARY / REV. CHARLES H.A. DALL / A MEMORIAL PAPER BY HIS DIVINITY SCHOOL CLASSMATE (Boston: Press of Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street). OUR 1ST MISSIONARY

Class Secretary Henry Williams put together the MEMORIALS OF THE CLASS OF 1837 OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. PREPARED FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR GRADUATION (Printed for the Class, Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street). HARVARD MEN OF 1837

JOSEPH GALES SEATON, the son of W.W. [William Winston] Seaton, one of the editors and proprietors of the National Intelligencer, was born in Washington City, July 27, 1817. He left only his autograph and the date of his birth in the Class-Book, and as he entered college in our Senior year he was not closely identified with the class. His name is not in the catalog for 1836-7, but appears in the commencement programme. He had but few intimates, yet his father says “he cherished the most affectionate feelings for his classmates.” From an obituary sent me by Mr. Seaton shortly after his son’s death, which took place at Washington, D.C., Feb. 9, 1857, I am able to give a few particulars of his career. He pursued his classical studies at Georgetown College and entered Harvard in 1836, receiving his degree the following year. He studied law in the University of Virginia, but after being admitted to the bar he soon relinquished the practice of his profession for literary pursuits and journalism. “He was the first to prepare for the National Intelligencer those daily reviews of the proceedings of the Senate, which have since formed a prominent feature in that journal. To these sketches he gave a grace and an animation all his own; insomuch that even the dry details of legislation rarely failed to evoke some souvenir of the classic realms through which he had travelled.” “While on a tour of Europe he was commissioned by President Taylor, with the unanimous consent of the Senate, as Secretary of Legation to the Germanic Confederation; and afterwards he was entrusted with a confidential commission during the political complications of that disturbed period.” “He performed the duties assigned him with honor to himself and to the satisfaction of the then Secretary of State, John M. Clayton.” “In every relation of life Gales Seaton was remarkable for the singular combination of modesty and self-reliance,— a modesty which was the surest criterion of his merit, and a self-reliance which gave a poise to his character while in the vigor of health, and preserved him from murmuring or complaining beneath the weariness and pain of lingering disease.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2017. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: June 15, 2017 HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX

JOSEPH GALES SEATON JOSEPH GALES SEATON the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.