Three Rivers
Hudson~Mohawk~Schoharie
History From America's Most Famous Valleys

The Frontiersmen of New York
by Jeptha R. Simms
Albany, NY 1883

Volume I, Page 342

The Seeber Family.-- One of the earliest tradesmen successfully established in the Mohawk valley as far west, was a German named William Seeber, who had a store about a mile to the westward of Fort Plain, where the farm dwelling now stands, recently occupied by Adam Lipe. Just when Mr. Seeber came to this country is unknown, but he was trading here before the French war in the palmy days of Sir William Johnson; and almost within a stone's throw of him then resided the former Indian trader, John Abeel, father of the renowned Cornplanter. William Seeber was evidently the progenitor of many of the name in this part of the state. He came hither with a wife taken in the fatherland, by whom he had four sons, Audolph, Jacob, William, and Conrad, and two daughters, Magdalene and Caty, who married respectively, Frederick Bell and Adam Klock. By his second marriage, this wife was a Miss Walrath, he had three sons, Henry, John (known as Esquire John) and Adam, and two daughters, Marilles, who married Peter Young, Esq., and a daughter named Mary Elizabeth, who never married. These seven sons were all grown up and married before the war, if we except possibly one or two of the youngest. Audolph, the oldest son, was then a widower. These Seebers, father and sons, all warmly espoused their country's cause, while the sons-in-law of the former, Bell and Klock, leaving their families behind, both went to Canada with their Tory associates and came back on several occasions, to imbrue their hands in the blood of their former neighbors. I have stated in some other connection, that William Seeber, Sen., and his sons Audolph and Jacob, were in the Oriskany battle, in which Audolph was slain and his father and brother were mortally wounded. The widow of this William Seeber, afterward married John Rolfe, who lived at the Boght, then a small Dutch settlement near the present city of Cohoes.