THE SEYMOUR WILL CASE tablished in New Orleans, was born in a quaker bottom settlement on the banks of the Ohio, and christened " Rachel Fanny Brown." There was the most plenary proof that the home of the parents of the claimants had been there for many years; that on this date, January 26, 1826, a girl was born to them whom they named Rachel Fanny. She grew up with the other four children of the family, and attended the neighboring country school with them. An elder sister, Sarah Henrietta, married, but shortly losing her husband, went to Cincinnati, about 1839. Fanny joined her there a few years later, and did not return to her home until 1849. The sisters went into service, at first, Fanny living for a time with a family by the name of Seymour. It seemed that Mrs. Seymour wanted to adopt Fanny, but her mother objected. The brother claimant testified that he saw her at the residence of the Sey mours at one time when visiting that city. For several years before leaving Cincin nati these sisters led disreputable lives, conducting a somewhat notorious house of prostitution. Sarah married again, and in 1849 she and her husband started to California. He died on the way, but she reached Sacramento in 1850. She successively married two other men, dying at that city in 1870. Fanny returned to her native home in 1849, taking a little girl along with her who was kept by Fanny's mother and the claim ant brother until she was thirteen years old. Sarah and her husband, having returned on a visit in 1857, took the little girl away with them. At the first trial,— there were two, and two appeals to the Supreme Court,— there was a period from 1844 to 1846 during which there seemed to be no very satisfactory evidence as to the whereabouts of Fanny, but subsequent efforts of the attorney-general tended to clear up these obscurities. In support of the contention of the state of Louisiana that the decedent was of English
617
birth and had died without heirs, there^was testimony that in June, 1846, among the persons landing at the city of New York from the ship Waterloo, Captain Allen, from Liverpool, England, was a young lady, apparently about nineteen years of age.^It was testified by some of her alleged fellow passengers that on the way across _she had stated that her name was "Fannie Minerva Seymour," and that she was born in London, England. One of these witnesses stated that the young girl impressed him as_being of a better class of servants; a barmaid, clearly English, with the cockney 'accent, although she had lost most of that accent when he last saw her, in 1868, at New Or leans. The testimony of that man supplied some romantic incidents in this memorable history. This witness said that he went to California in June, 1849, and after being there a short time, met her on the street in San Francisco, had a long conversation concerning the pleasant time they had on the voyage from Liverpool to New York; that he bade her good-by and went to the mines, and " never saw her any more till he returned home, in 1857, when he met her on Canal Street, in New Orleans, and after a pleasant chat she informed him thatf_she had changed her name from Fannie Seymour to Fannie Sweet." He said that they be came intimately acquainted, that he never lost sight of her for longer than a month from that time until the breaking out of the Civil War. After the war, their acquaintance was kept up until he went to Washington, D.C., in 1868, as an officer of the United States, since which he had not seen her. Another witness, born in 1830, testified that he was a passenger aboard the Waterloo, in June, 1846, and that there was a lively young girl named Seymour (he thought it might have been Fannie Seymour), a pass enger who was with a family or some other parties." When, however, it comes to be known and remembered that in 1846 these men were aged eleven and sixteen years respec
