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George Dudley Seymour

Lawyer

Centurion, 1898–1945

Born 6 October 1859 in Bristol, Connecticut

Died 21 June 1945 in New Haven, Connecticut

Buried Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut

Proposed by Henry van Dyke and Charles S. Fairchild

Elected 5 November 1898 at age thirty-nine

Century Memorial

George Dudley Seymour. [Born] 1859. Patent Lawyer; Antiquarian.

Authority on Nathan Hale and other figures in New England history, preserver of the Hale homestead. Awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree by Yale in 1913, for his services, in the words of his Fellow Centurion, President Hadley, “in making the City which is Yale’s home a worthier and more beautiful place to live.” The public orator, on this occasion, Centurion Theodore Woolsey, cited him thus:

“Neither New Haven born nor a son of Yale, Mr. Seymour has shown more than a son’s devotion to the University, more than a native’s love and care for the city of his adoption. A born antiquarian, he has studied the future as well as the past of our city life. He has preached the beauty of order, the harmonies of civic art, the duty and value of municipal foresight, until we too begin to share his vision. And in his eyes Hale and Yale are well-nigh synonymous.”

Source: Henry Allen Moe Papers, Mss.B.M722. Reproduced by permission of American Philosophical Society Library & Museum, Philadelphia

Henry Allen Moe
Henry Allen Moe Papers, 1945 Memorials