Calvin B. Seymour was born around 1810 in Massachusetts. He moved to Stewart County, Georgia, around 1831, and he married Harriet A. Ruffin on January 9, 1839. They had at least eight children: Edgar, born around 1839; Calvin, born around 1841; Lucius, born around 1843; Geraldus, born around 1845; Pauline, born around 1852; Mary, born around 1854; Gerome, born around 1856; and Virginia, born around 1859. He worked as a clerk, and he served as a local postmaster and tithe assessor. He later described himself as a “poor man,” but he enslaved at least two people. Sometime before 1865, he lost a leg as a result of disease.

 

In the election of 1860, he later confessed, he “cast his vote for those who favored secession.” He believed “Secession would be peaceful…and that separation was the only mode to preserve his own slave property.” He supported the Confederacy during the war. He applied for a presidential pardon after the war. He assured President Andrew Johnson that he believed that “this question of Secession is finally settled” and that “Slavery is finally extinct.” He received a pardon on August 25, 1866.

 

He lived in Lumpkin, Georgia, after the war and continued working as a clerk. He died in Georgia on June 5, 1886.

SOURCES