For decades I've been carrying the memory around of the family I read about in the NYT that, lead by the senior member, would gather around each July 4th and take turns reading aloud passages from the Declaration of Independence.
I remember nothing about the name of the family, or where they gathered. But if it didn't get me thinking of doing something similar, it did have the effect of my paying more attention to the facsimile reprint of the Declaration that the NYT would reprint on the back of one of its sections each July 4th.
I don't know when the the Times started doing this—and they are still doing it—albeit they've shrunk the reprint from a full page to something smaller, making it even harder to try and read it from the inimitable cursive script used by the colonists that has the letter "s" written in a looping "f." I never knew what was up with that, but if you can detect an "f", it's really an "s."
The Times has however provided a transcription in regular print surrounding the shrunken facsimile. And below, they've listed the signers and the states they were from. Reading the Declaration made easier.
You have to hand it to the colonists who actually took quill pen to parchment to write the Declaration out. It can't have been easy to write a lengthy document without the aid of white-out, or word processing. There are no cross outs in the Declaration.
It was fun to get past the Biblical opening..."The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands..." and dive down a little deeper into the text. It's hard to decipher, and it makes you wonder why are there so many people missing cursive writing?
The most fun was always found in trying to see who singed the document. Most people know the main signature belongs to John Hancock. Growing up I always remember the phrase..."put your John Hancock right there..." when someone was instructing you to sign something. I wonder how many people today would look at you if you were to now so instruct a signature to be placed somewhere. "John who?"
Where I grew up in Queens, there is main street that runs a very cow path route north/south that crosses Northern Boulevard: Francis Lewis Boulevard. There is a high school named after the fellow. And who was he? Well, he was one of those who put his John Hancock under John Hancock.
No, the family that reads to Declaration, the Seymour clan, were not signatories to the document. But with the scion's name of Whitney North Seymour Sr., followed by Whitney North Seymour Jr., married to Catryna Ten Eyck, a descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island (not a signer of the Declaration) you might think about the toast by of John Collins Bossidy at a 1910 Holy Cross Alumni dinner...
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and cod,
Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
And how was I reminded that it was the Seymour family that gathered on Cape Cod on July 4th and took turns reading from the Declaration? How else? Someone dies and I read it in an obituary.
Whitney North Seymour Jr., a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District in New York, passed away at 95. And being a nonagenarian, there is no surprise that Robert McFadden has written the obituary.
And right there in the lead is the word that McFadden used when John Lindsay passed away, "patrician."
"Whitney North Seymour Jr., a patrician Republican who battled graft as President Richard M. Nixon's United States attorney in Manhattan in the 1970s..."
I remember the name, and I remember the headlines he created as he attained convictions.
When I thought of Whitney Seymour North Jr. I always thought of Whitney Darrow Jr., a New Yorker cartoonist who contributed pieces for over 50 years.
It's the name Whitney, first or last name, that creates an air of high social hierarchy. But it can be deceiving. When I was giving a demonstration of some fraud software to a Dr. Whitney and he mentioned Saratoga, I immediately thought, hey, this guy might be one of the wealthy Whitneys associated with horse racing. Maybe I'll get a pass.
When I inquired if he was connected to the racing Whitneys, he dryly asked, "are they someone who is rich and famous?"
"Yes."
"Then it's not me."
Close your eyes, say Whitney North Seymour Jr. a few times and you correctly imagine a private school education, Princeton, and Yale law school. His father was President Hoover's assistant solicitor general and a partner in a white-shoe firm Simpson Thatcher and Bartlett. For a brief point in Junior's career he worked at his father's firm.
Mentioned in the obituary are books he wrote, and a reference to contributing articles to the Times and other periodicals. Not mentioned is the one article I so distinctly remember that he wrote that appeared in the Sunday Times magazine section.
The 1974 story is a several thousand word essay recapping a vacation trip with a station wagon and a trailer to Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona and the Seymour's run in with the law: "Frontier Justice: A Run-In With the Law." It seems the Seymour's got a traffic summons for "parking on the roadway."
It doesn't take you long into the story before you realize that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York is splitting hairs with an Arizona state trooper over the definition of "roadway." It's turning into a Federal case.
When you're finished reading the story, there is a denouement, but you are left wondering why would you go through all this?
It's easy to understand when you know the family takes turns reading the Declaration of Independence every July 4th.
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