His appearance alone indicates that Seth Kinman was a one-of-a-kind man whose life story is filled with adventure, storytelling, and the stuff of which heroes are made. Kinman was a trapper, hunter, gold prospector, and for a short time, even tried his hand at farming.

Kinman was born near Allenwood, then called Uniontown, formerly in Lycoming County in the year 1815. But Kinman had some ties to the Montour County region as well. An article in the Montour American in August of 1905 says Kinman was well known in the Rush Township area. He was an uncle of Northumberland County Sheriff J. R. Sharpless. He married Anna Maria Sharpless on January 14^th of 1840. She was the daughter of Enos and Elizabeth (Kinman) Sharpless of Catawissa. 

According to a lifelong friend of one of his children, Kinman was over six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. He had piercing blue eyes, heavy sandy whiskers and dressed as a typical frontiersman. His clothing included buckskin, pieces from an old army uniform, and an unusual hat made of black bear skin, with a band of brown bear skin and a grizzly bear tail looped across the top as an ornament.   

To add to his larger-than-life story, Kinman had a rifle used by his father in the Blackhawk Indian War in Illinois That was where his father James became acquainted with Abraham Lincoln. Seth Kinman’s gun was called “Old Cotton Bale”, and he also had a fiddle that was made from the skull of his mule “Dave”. Before he became Kinman’s fiddle, the story goes that the mule would come running whenever he heard Seth play music. Kinman thought it only fitting that the skull was used for the fiddle’s main body, while a rib was used for the bow, and part of old “Dave’s” tail was used to make string. 

According to a biography of Kinman, written by Marshall Anspach in 1947, Seth’s father James was an innkeeper, millwright and miller in the area of Washington Township, Lycoming County. But after becoming tired of innkeeping, James decided to head west in 1830 and settled along the Illinois River in the town of Pekin, Illinois. That’s where the family lived when the Blackhawk War erupted in 1832. James Pekin became part of a company of men assembled to fight the Indians. And seventeen-year-old Seth took part in building a fort to protect families in that area of the country.    

We’re not sure how Seth came to marry Anna Sharpless in 1840, but we know he tried farming for a time, grew restless, and got the fever for gold. That’s when he decided to head west. Using the funds on hand, he purchased a mule team and crossed the Rockies into California. Kinman soon learned he wasn’t better suited to prospecting for gold than he was digging in the ground when farming. But Kinman did learn that he could sell all the meat he could supply to the men who were prospecting in the west and used “Old Cotton Bale” to supply meat and earn Kinman a living.   

Kinman reportedly returned home to Illinois in August of 1851, but after finding his family unfit for travel, he headed back to California in the spring of 1852. Once again, Kinman used his hunting skills to provide elk to the soldiers of the area, at twenty-five cents per pound. He also built a cabin near what is now Ferndale, and later another cabin to receive his family near Bear River Ridge.    

According to Anspach’s writings on Kinman, a family bible gives the following information about his children: James, his eldest son, was born February 9, 1842, and died Dec. 27, 1852; Carlin Sharpless, was born March 10, 1846, died January 18, 1932; Austin was born Dec. 27, 1847, died Dec. 4, 1852; Ellen E. was born Oct. 28, 1849, died March 28, 1872; and Roderick Carl was born March 12, 1851, and died January 18, 1929. 

During Kinman’s absence from Illinois, his wife Anna Marie died on April 20^th, 1853. In May of 1854, he, along with his mother and three living children headed across the plains, joined a wagon train and had sixty head of cattle placed on a ship for Seth’s California home. Kinman had numerous run-ins with the Indians during his lifetime and had his cabin burned to the ground three times. He and his family eventually settled in an area known as Table Bluff at the southern end of Humboldt Bay. His mother died in January of 1863.  

During Kinman’s lifetime, he claimed to have killed more than 800 grizzly bears. And based on newspaper accounts, the mountain man became a true hero one night in 1860, after witnessing a shipwreck on the coast near his home. He gave this account in a newspaper article. “I have now to chronicle an important event in my life, that is the part I took in helping to rescue the passengers of the wrecked steamer Northerner. On January 4, 1860, the North Pacific steamer, Northerner, left San Francisco for Portland, Oregon. She carried about 200 people. On the fifth, about two hours to sunset, a fearful gale direct from the west arose. She struck a reef and immediately began to fill with water. My residence on the hill of Table Bluff was distant about ten miles from the scene of the disaster, and I had an unobstructed view of the ocean for a distance of at least 30 miles. I immediately took a hired man with me and started for the slough that makes it from Table Bluff to Eel River. Here we were joined by another white man and a Spaniard. The four of us jumped into a canoe and the way we made her travel was a caution. We were the first on the spot except the hotel keeper at Centerville, Mr. Soulee, and the store-keeper, Berdin.

“The ship was then 100 yards offshore, and we could hear the crushing of timbers as she began to part, and the shrieks of the women and children were enough to make the stoutest heart quail and give way. I immediately got a long rope and made one end of it fast around my waist and getting those on the shore to hold on to it, made them pull me out whenever they saw me catch hold of anything. We did so and managed to save an immense number of lives. I was in the water nearly all night, struggling amongst the breakers nearest the shore, grappling amongst masses of floating timber and goods for human bodies. These would pull to the shore and thereby some large fires would resuscitate and attend to them.

“By this time, the whole neighborhood for a distance of 5 miles was at the scene of the wreck. A great many of the survivors were early transported to my place at Table Bluff, and there tenderly cared for by my mother, until such time as they had so far recovered that they could be forwarded to their destination. On the second day, there were about 40 bodies recovered. These were buried all in a row and one of the spars of the vessel made into a large cross and erected over the spot where it stands to this day. The officers made me a present of one of the lifeboats saved from the wreck and other property of more value to me than most of the others who helped themselves.” 

Kinman made chairs from either Elk Horn or Grizzly Bear to present to Presidents Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, and Hayes. In exchange for presenting Buchanan his chair, Kinman received an $1800 dollar appointment to assist in removing the Indians in California and Oregon to their reservations. Buchanan also presented Kinman with a Colt revolver. 

It’s said that one of the chairs that Kinman made from two grizzly bears had a unique feature. By touching a cord, the head of the monster grizzly would dart out from under the seat snapping and gnashing its teeth. That chair was reportedly presented to President Andrew Johnson in September of 1865. Fact or fiction, Kinman reportedly told President Johnson it was designed to keep the office seekers from getting too near him. 

One of his grizzly bear chairs was displayed at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 as part of the display of riches for Humboldt County California. 

By Kinman’s own account, he frequently had the pleasure of calling on President Lincoln during the spring of 1865 and talked with him the night before his assassination. He was also present at Ford’s Theatre the night Lincoln was shot and afterwards was one of those who went with the president’s body as far as Columbus, Ohio. The New York Times, of April 26, 1865, tells how Seth Kinman was one of 60,000 citizens in the funeral procession, clad in his buckskin suit and carrying Old Cotton Bale over his shoulder. 

According to people interviewed from this area who knew Kinman, he returned to northcentral Pennsylvania to visit old friends on occasion. He is said to have stayed at the boarding home of a cousin in Montgomery while in Lycoming County. During one of the visits back east, Kinman brought along a ten-year-old Indian boy, who died and was buried in that county.

Kinman is said to have written his memoirs later in life. Early in 1888 he accidentally shot himself, below the knee of one leg. The limb was amputated, and he died from complications. Seth was buried in his Buckskin clothes at Table Bluff Cemetery in Loleta, Humboldt County, California.

Mountain man, hunter, trapper, storyteller, and chairmaker to the presidents, it’s safe to say that another person from the Susquehanna Valley, Kinman left his mark on American history.