CHAPTER III.

THE NAME SEATON GIVEN TO MANY PLACES.

In the north of England there are several places that have been given the name Seaton, being mostly, if not altogether, localities where persons of the name had settled and were extensive landowners. Sir William Dugdale (1605-1668), an eminent English antiquary, mentions, in the northeastern part of England, an "Ivo de Seaton" and a Capella de Seaton"; also a "villa et territorium de Seaton." And William Camden (1551-1623), a celebrated and conscientious antiquarian and historian," gives a Seaton in Northumberland as part of the barony of De-la-Vall in the thirteenth century, and Seaton Delavell and Monk Seaton are plainly marked on a superb collection of maps spoken of by Robert Seton as being in the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of William and John Blaeu, published at Amsterdam in 1648. He further remarks that these names of places are now mostly written Seaton, but that it was not so formerly, evidently meaning that the spelling was Seton at that time.

In Rand & McNally's Atlas there is given a harbor at Cockenzie, in Scotland, called Port Seaton; and in Cram's a Seaton village in the city of Toronto, Canada, in which village there is a Seaton street. The village is said to have been named for Baron Seaton, whose title was derived from the City of Seaton, a watering-resort on the sea, in Devonshire, England.

In the United States of America we find a town of Seatonville in Marshall county, West Virginia, the northwest corner county of the State, located on the Ohio river. This place is given on some maps as Wolf Run. The town was named for John B. Seaton.

There is a village of Seatonville in Jefferson county, Kentucky,

on the Ohio river, where the river forms the boundary between that State and Indiana. This village was very appropriately named Seatonville by its founder, Charles Allen Seaton, who with Kenner, George, Richard, and Kenner Seaton Jr. all lived on adjoining farms in the vicinity. When a postoffice was granted the village, some one at the Postoffice Department saw fit to give it the name of Malott instead of Seatonville as petitioned for.

The village of Seaton, Blount county, Tennessee, was named for Mr. "Gran" Seaton, son of Alfred Seaton, whose father was Philip Seaton, of Sevier county. The post office has been discontinued or renamed. This village seems to have been located inland and not on any large stream, or other body of water, as has been the almost unvarying custom among persons of our name when establishing towns.

Coming on west, we find a village of Seaton on the Iowa Central Railroad, in Mercer county, Illinois, which was founded by George Seaton, president of the Bank of Seaton, for whom the town was named. This county is located on the Mississippi river. There is also quite a village called Seatonville in Bureau county, of the same State, and a Seatonville Junction,--both of the latter places being located on the Indiana, Illinois & Iowa Railroad.

In Hamilton county, Nebraska, a village and postoffice of Seaton were established by Robert Seaton, the first settler and first merchant in the place. Along the northwest corner of this county flows the Platte river.

Again, in far-away Oregon we find a postoffice of Seaton, in the western part of Lane county, on the Siuslau river, about fifteen miles from where it empties into the Pacific ocean. This office must have been named by some person in the Department, for we are assured that no Seaton ever lived in the neighborhood. The name of the office has lately been changed to Mapleton.

Cram's list gives a Seaton post office in Fayette county, Iowa, but a letter to the postmaster was returned with the notation upon it that there is no such office in the State.

There is a postoffice of Seaton in Bell county, in about the central part of eastern Texas, but the postmaster informs us that

no person of the name ever made his residence there, but that the office must have received its name from some one connected with the Postoffice Department of the Government.

There is a curious letter in the British Museum (addit. 19,185), dated Pianketank (Virginia), 21st July, 1730, from Dorothy Seaton, widow, to Sir Robert Kemp, Bart., of Ulston Hall, near Yoxford, in Suffolk, by the way of London. It bears the following indorsation: "Rec'd the 20th of October, 1730,-not answered." The writer's maiden name appears to have been Kemp, and after making out a relationship to Sir Robert, she narrates some of her misfortunes. In a postscript she gives her address as "Seaton's Ferry on the Pianketank, Virginia."

Last of all, so far as we know, there is a street in the city of Washington, D. C., that has been given the name of Seaton street.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FAMILY NAME.

"Have regard for thy name; for that shall continue with thee above a thousand great treasures of gold.”—Ecclesiasticus, xii. 12.

THE manner in which we came to be called Seaton is a curiosity, indeed. At first, only individual names were given to anyone, Indian fashion, for some peculiarity of the one receiving it. It appears our earliest known ancestors used pikes or spears in the almost continual wars in which they were engaged. For that reason they were called Picot, which means Pikemen in the early Norman language. Later, these people seem to have settled down to the more quiet life of agriculturists, and, oats being their principal crop, they soon gained such a reputation for the wonderful crops of this valuable grain that their section came to be known by a name derived from the Latin name of oats, which are called avena in that language. So the vicinity came to be known as Avenelle, and our forefathers as Avenel.

This manner of calling a section of country after its principal crop has its counterpart in Alexander county, Illinois, where so much wheat was formerly produced as to give the name Wheatland to that section and a town therein.

We find a Baron Walter Avenel, descended of a very ancient border family, who once possessed immense estates in Eskdale, mentioned in "The Monastery," by Scott; also, a Mary Avenel. In the same story he describes the arms of Glendenning and Avenel, two ancient families.

As the family increased in numbers they began to spread out, as they did nearly a thousand years later in the eastern part of this country, and some of them lived at a place called Say; hence that branch became Picot Avenel de Say; the de meaning of. Say is said to have been located near Argentan, Normandy.

One Saher de Say went to Scotland and located in the Lothians, where he built a "toun" which was called Sea-toun, or Say toun. One of his descendants was made Lord of Sea-toun, and some of his posterity took the name Seatoun or some one of the twenty-five other ways in which the name has been spelled. So the family was Seatoun until when Sir Alexander Seton IV., Knight, died. That was the last of the Seatouns in direct descent, but his daughter, Margaret Seton, married Alan de Winton, a distant kinsman, who assumed the name Seton in order to secure the titles and estates. Had Alan de Winton been possessed of superior titles and estates to those belonging to Margaret Seton he would doubtless have retained his own name and all succeeding generations who are now called Seaton would have sported the euphonious name of Winton, as some of his descendants did.

Monsignor Seton, from whom we learn these and many other interesting facts, says Avenel was one of the great names of Normandy, and that the Avenels were kinsmen of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy.

In an article on Seton Chapel, in Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, by Sir Walter Scott, it is said: "They took their original name from their habitation, Seaton, the dwelling by the Sea,' in East Lothian."

In this way the name came to be Seaton, or any one of the other ways of spelling the name, for it should be remembered there was no established spelling of any name by legal enactment at that time, each writer spelling any word as seemed proper to him from the way he heard it pronounced, as often happens even at this late date. But, in spite of the numerous different ways in which the name has been spelled, all of the persons most vitally interested, with barely one exception, pronounce the name alike, so far as we have been able to learn.

We have the word of Archbishop Seton that he has known instances where those of the family who had the a in their names have dropped it; and Leonard Seaton of Henderson, New York, informed me that some members of our branch of the family spelled the name Seton until about 1817, when they added the a. In the Dictionary of National Biography the name of Alexander