Minnesota State Senator Virgil Barbour Seward

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    This is Story No. 13 in my occasional series in the "52 Week Ancestor Challenge." I like the idea but don't feel any need to stick to a one-a-week quota, though I've kept the name. I see these stories as shorter stories about people who are still interesting. (I think everyone is interesting!) 

Virgil Barbour Seward (1853-1919) Minnesota Legislator

 

      Virgil, the baby of his family, was at one time called “Virgie,” but that probably didn’t outlast his early childhood. He was an achiever in a family of achievers. Born in little Larwill, Indiana to Amos Seward and Pleaides Barbour Seward, he moved to Mankato, Minnesota as a little toddler in 1855. It was then a raw little town on the banks of the Mississippi, with a handful of log cabins. Virgil’s father, a miller, helped get a school started and taught there for a while himself in the winter. The family were ardent Presbyterians and valued education.

 

College

 

      Virgil was a graduate of the University of Minnesota. College attendance in his day was exceedingly rare. The university had only 274 students in 1874. Students took an examination for admission; if successful they paid five dollars annually for “incidental expenses.” They could enter as young as age 14.

      Tuition was free but students were on their own for books, room and board. There were also fees for supplies in some classes, such as chemistry. They were encouraged to “learn a good art or trade” before coming to college, to increase their chances of finding a job to support themselves. “Bring some money, fifty dollars at least, on which to live until you find work,” the college catalog advised. Suggested occupations were teaching in the public schools, private tutor, piano tuner, wall paper hanger, taxidermist, salesman, land surveyor, teamster, carpenter, farm hand and more.

      College classes began in 1869. When Virgil attended the college consisted of one large building of 53 rooms, with an assembly room that could seat 700. School began with an assembly of the entire college at eight o’clock, with a brief devotional and “rhetorical exercises” by upperclassmen. This was very typical of colleges at the time. Students could choose the classical, scientific or modern course of study; Virgil chose scientific. The school year was divided into three sessions, one of 14 weeks and the others of 12 weeks.


Career and Marriage

 

      Virgil studied law with M.G. Willard in Mankato after college, and with Congressman J. N. Castle in Stillwater. He was admitted to the bar in September 1878 and practiced there until spring of 1879. Making a living solely as a lawyer in small Minnesota towns was a challenge then, and lawyers came and went, establishing and departing from partnerships. Many also practiced real estate and did a lot of work in bill collecting, and Virgil was among them. In 1879 he moved to Marshall.

      There he married Millie Eliza Hilyer in 1881. They had four children and divorced in March 1893. Millie never remarried, and as was common at the time, listed herself as “widowed.” Even in a 1926 city directory in California, where she moved with her daughters, she was identified as the widow of Virgil B. Seward. 

     In 1885 he was named county attorney, the first in a long line of prominent leadership positions. They included:


  • County Attorney: Marshall, Minnesota (1885, 1886, 1889, 1892, 1895, and 1896); 1885 to 1896

  • Municipal Council/Aldermen: Marshall, Minnesota (Village Council, President); 1898 to 1899

  • Municipal Mayor: Marshall, Minnesota; 1902 to 1902

  • Municipal Mayor: Marshall, Minnesota; 1915 to 1917

  • State Senate 1907-1910, Republican

 

 As a politician, naturally his name was mentioned often in the newspapers. He gave speeches on various occasions, such as when he pledged his support to Teddy Roosevelt in 1904, and when he spoke at a Labor Day celebration in 1905 in Revere. In 1907 he introduced a bill in the Minnesota State Legislature to amend the state Constitution to allow suffrage for women. All that was needed was to drop the word “male,” so the document would read, “Every person over the age of twenty-one years…”

     He remarried to Edna “Daise” Goodwin in the fall of 1893. (Her name was pronounced ‘Daisy.’) On the 1900 census, he and Daise lived alone with a Polish maid. In 1908 Daise sought help from a stay in a sanitarium on the banks of the St. Croix River in Hudson, Wisconsin. It specialized in the treatment of “nervous diseases,” drug and alcohol addiction and “mild mental cases,” which could have been depression. In December she went to a hospital in St. Paul on the advice of her doctor, and a newspaper item said her problems were exacerbated by what was believed to be a heart condition.  

     Hopefully she recovered fully from whatever ailment she had, as Virgil and Daise adopted an eight-year old girl, Frances Bell, in 1917.

     Virgil wrote his will 25 July 1917, the same day he adopted Frances. In the will, he left everything to Daise. “I am not unmindful of my four children from a former marriage, but it is my will that none of them take any part or portion of my estate…” he wrote.

      Virgil died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve in 1919. Newspaper editors paid tribute to him. The Marshall News-Messenger said, “Mr. Seward was endowed with unusual mental powers and a bright intellect and was without a doubt one of the most brilliant lawyers of Southern Minnesota. In public office Mr. Seward displayed marked ability and as a private citizen he has been of great service to his home city and community.”

     The Minnesota Mascot said, “For 40 years this man has stood among the foremost of the bar in this part of the state. The brilliancy of his intellect has been recognized by all.”


Note: Virgil is the nephew of my third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour. He was my great-great-grandfather Myron Cassius Barbour's first cousin. I wrote a blogpost about Virgil's brother, Victor in "The Murder of Victor C. Seward" in January 2023.


Sources:

 

      “In Memoriam Hon. Virgil B. Seward,” Minnesota Journal of the Senate, April 21, 1921, p. 1331-1332.

      “Seward, Virgil Barber,” Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, https://www.lrl.mn.gov/legdb/fulldetail?id=14741, accessed June 18, 2022.

      Calendar for the Year 1874-5, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota, 1874.

      Hughes, Thomas. “The Bench and Bar of Blue Earth County,” 1909, http://www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org/assets/Blue%20Earth%20Cty%20B%20&%20B-L.pdf

    

Newspapers:

 

    “Seward and Thorpe Elected Delegates to Chicago Without Any Contest of Any Sort,” The Minneapolis Journal, 23 March 1903, p. 1. 

     “Electric Railroads. House Measure Would Facilitate Their Construction. Bill In Senate to Amend Constitution To Grant Women Suffrage,” The Pioneer (Bemidji, Minnesota), 2 Feb 1907, p. 4. 

     “Seward Funeral Today,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis), 28 Dec 1919, p. 14.

     “Friends Pay Tribute to Virgil B. Seward,” Star Tribune, 11 Jan 1920, p. 11.


Copyright by Andrea Auclair © 2023

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