Individual Details
Howard Sebree
(March 9, 1834 - Aft 1892)
"Howard Sebree and his father's family were from Owen County, Kentucky. Ancestors on Paternal side were Huguenots, who came to America in early seventeenth century. The mother was descended from Scotch-Irish Ancestry. Howard was a native of Owen County, Kentucky; earned his apprentice ship in Blacksmithing 1855 and 1856 in Louisville, Kentucky. He followed the railroad to Salt Lake City in 1872. In 1888 he came to Caldwell, Idaho and helped organize the first Bank in Caldwell, the Stock Growers and Traders Bank. Two years later reorganized to First National Bank of Caldwell. He was President for 15 years. He built the Sebree Canal, which carried water from Boise River to thousands of acres of land west of Caldwell. There is a Gulch between Boise and Mountain Home called Sebree Gulch. He was a member of the Baptist Church. Howard was an uncle of Raymond D. Sebree." (Idaho History Book, Vol. III, 1920.)
"Howard ran away from home when he was 17 years old, going to Frankfort, Kentuck, and becoming a blacksmith's apprentice for three years. As a journeyman he then worked at his trade, wandering through Ohio and Indiana before he married and settled in Leavenworth, Kansas. When the Civil War commenced, Howard, an emphatic Southern sympathizer, was forced to leave the state and all of his property was confiscated. Howard recouped his assets working at his trade in Black Hawk, Colorado, during the years 1862-1866 when that town and its neighbor, Central City in Gilpin County, were feverish with a developing gold-mining boom. Howard then realized his dream of having a beautiful farm when he returned to the Midwest and accumulated 560 acres of land about thee miles south of Carthage, llinois. Subsequent business activities in the West took Howard to Colorado, Wyoming (where he helped lay out the city of Cheyenne), Utah, Idaho, and Montana. As a contractor he built the Greeley, Colorado, canal in partnerships and alone he was involved in a variety of retail ventures, selling wagons, agricultural implements, groceries and dry goods. He owned forwarding and commission houses, manufacturing and banking firms. A detailed chronicle of Howard's travels and business activities is related in his son's history. By 1892 Howard had liquidated most of his vast enterprise and retired to Caldwell, Idaho, a town he had helped lay out. Quoting the HISTORY OF THE SEBREE FAMILY: "Thus the great business closed up, and it is today modestly represented by the First National Bank of Dillon, Montana; the Howard Sebree Company, at Shosone, Idaho and the First National Bank at Caldwell, Idaho which justly be called the remnants of one of the greatest concerns in the West." Howard continued to live in Idaho until 1898 when he went to Richmond, Virginia." (Jessie J. Seabree, Boise, Idaho.)
"As the governor crossed Seventh Avenue, he approached the pale cream facade of the Saratoga Hotel, Caldwell's principal hostelry, the fulcrum of its social life. One of divers hotels across the land -- as well as a Chicago bordello and a Dodge City saloon -- named after the swanky New York racing resort, it was further evidence of Caldwell's homage to eastern models. A dandy little hotel for a town this size, it belonged to a rival banker, Howard Sebree, president of the First National Bank, who'd entrusted the management to his son Ralph. The Sebrees had spared no expense to create an establishment "first class in all its appointments and fully up to the requirements of the place for many years." For $2.50 a night, each of its fifty rooms supplied hot and cold running water, steam heat, and electric light, courtesy of the Sebrees' own Caldwell Power Company. They had spent upwards of $40,000 on construction and furnishings. Built in the French chateau style popular at the moment, the Saratoga had a mansard roof with a line of dormer windows, corner turrets, a Palladian window, and bay windows flanking the canopied Main Street entrance. From that arched doorway, a broad corridor led to a rotunda, where tables provided blackjack, faro, and roulette to meet the needs not just of hotel guests and local gamblers but of the big spenders who came through town on stagecoaches bound for California. Farther back was a comfortable bar, the favorite watering hole for the town's more prosperous merchants; a spacious dining room that, gourmands down from Boise were pleased to report, set "a very good table"; and an adjacent ballroom, where, on St. Patrick's Day, 1904, one hundred invited couples had waltzed and reeled into the wee hours to celebrate the hotel's grand opening. The governor was a man of fixed habits: every Saturday he was in Caldwell, he crossed the Saratoga's threshold just before six to pick a Tribune from the stack of papers on the gift shop counter. Press time was 5:00 p.m. Saturday -- and the first bundle always went to the Saratoga -- so these copies were barely an hour old. There they were now, the ink still wet on the grainy paper, smudging slightly under the pressure of his thumb. How he loved that smell. It swept him back nearly three decades to his days as an apprentice at the Knoxville Express, where one of his tasks had been to carry the papers from the press to waiting delivery wagons. The aroma of wet ink and pulpy newsprint had lingered in his nostrils ever since, the sweet fragrance of fresh news. Sinking into a creaking leather chair in the Saratoga bar room, hard by a fire in the brick hearth, Caldwell's first citizen may have ordered a cup of the hotel's mulled cider -- strictly nonalcoholic -- to ward off the blizzard's chill. Then, with a palpable flush of satisfaction, he spread the good old Tribune on his knee and began his practiced perusal." (Sebree Studies, pages 37 and 56.)
"Howard ran away from home when he was 17 years old, going to Frankfort, Kentuck, and becoming a blacksmith's apprentice for three years. As a journeyman he then worked at his trade, wandering through Ohio and Indiana before he married and settled in Leavenworth, Kansas. When the Civil War commenced, Howard, an emphatic Southern sympathizer, was forced to leave the state and all of his property was confiscated. Howard recouped his assets working at his trade in Black Hawk, Colorado, during the years 1862-1866 when that town and its neighbor, Central City in Gilpin County, were feverish with a developing gold-mining boom. Howard then realized his dream of having a beautiful farm when he returned to the Midwest and accumulated 560 acres of land about thee miles south of Carthage, llinois. Subsequent business activities in the West took Howard to Colorado, Wyoming (where he helped lay out the city of Cheyenne), Utah, Idaho, and Montana. As a contractor he built the Greeley, Colorado, canal in partnerships and alone he was involved in a variety of retail ventures, selling wagons, agricultural implements, groceries and dry goods. He owned forwarding and commission houses, manufacturing and banking firms. A detailed chronicle of Howard's travels and business activities is related in his son's history. By 1892 Howard had liquidated most of his vast enterprise and retired to Caldwell, Idaho, a town he had helped lay out. Quoting the HISTORY OF THE SEBREE FAMILY: "Thus the great business closed up, and it is today modestly represented by the First National Bank of Dillon, Montana; the Howard Sebree Company, at Shosone, Idaho and the First National Bank at Caldwell, Idaho which justly be called the remnants of one of the greatest concerns in the West." Howard continued to live in Idaho until 1898 when he went to Richmond, Virginia." (Jessie J. Seabree, Boise, Idaho.)
"As the governor crossed Seventh Avenue, he approached the pale cream facade of the Saratoga Hotel, Caldwell's principal hostelry, the fulcrum of its social life. One of divers hotels across the land -- as well as a Chicago bordello and a Dodge City saloon -- named after the swanky New York racing resort, it was further evidence of Caldwell's homage to eastern models. A dandy little hotel for a town this size, it belonged to a rival banker, Howard Sebree, president of the First National Bank, who'd entrusted the management to his son Ralph. The Sebrees had spared no expense to create an establishment "first class in all its appointments and fully up to the requirements of the place for many years." For $2.50 a night, each of its fifty rooms supplied hot and cold running water, steam heat, and electric light, courtesy of the Sebrees' own Caldwell Power Company. They had spent upwards of $40,000 on construction and furnishings. Built in the French chateau style popular at the moment, the Saratoga had a mansard roof with a line of dormer windows, corner turrets, a Palladian window, and bay windows flanking the canopied Main Street entrance. From that arched doorway, a broad corridor led to a rotunda, where tables provided blackjack, faro, and roulette to meet the needs not just of hotel guests and local gamblers but of the big spenders who came through town on stagecoaches bound for California. Farther back was a comfortable bar, the favorite watering hole for the town's more prosperous merchants; a spacious dining room that, gourmands down from Boise were pleased to report, set "a very good table"; and an adjacent ballroom, where, on St. Patrick's Day, 1904, one hundred invited couples had waltzed and reeled into the wee hours to celebrate the hotel's grand opening. The governor was a man of fixed habits: every Saturday he was in Caldwell, he crossed the Saratoga's threshold just before six to pick a Tribune from the stack of papers on the gift shop counter. Press time was 5:00 p.m. Saturday -- and the first bundle always went to the Saratoga -- so these copies were barely an hour old. There they were now, the ink still wet on the grainy paper, smudging slightly under the pressure of his thumb. How he loved that smell. It swept him back nearly three decades to his days as an apprentice at the Knoxville Express, where one of his tasks had been to carry the papers from the press to waiting delivery wagons. The aroma of wet ink and pulpy newsprint had lingered in his nostrils ever since, the sweet fragrance of fresh news. Sinking into a creaking leather chair in the Saratoga bar room, hard by a fire in the brick hearth, Caldwell's first citizen may have ordered a cup of the hotel's mulled cider -- strictly nonalcoholic -- to ward off the blizzard's chill. Then, with a palpable flush of satisfaction, he spread the good old Tribune on his knee and began his practiced perusal." (Sebree Studies, pages 37 and 56.)
Events
| Birth | March 9, 1834 | Owen County, Kentucky | |||
| Marriage | September 16, 1858 | Paris, Edgar County, Illinois - Lucinda Ellen Bell | |||
| Death | Aft 1892 | Richmond, Henrico County, Virginia |
Families
| Spouse | Lucinda Ellen Bell (1838 - 1918) |
| Child | Charles Howard Sebree (1861 - 1948) |
| Child | William Ellis Sebree (1862 - ) |
| Child | Edward Louis Sebree (1868 - 1868) |
| Child | Walter Robertson Sebree (1870 - 1954) |
| Child | Ralph Vernon Sebree (1878 - ) |
| Father | Nimrod B. Sebree (1803 - 1866) |
| Mother | Permelia Owens (1806 - 1886) |
| Sibling | Ellen C. Sebree (1827 - 1913) |
| Sibling | Robert J. Sebree (1828 - 1881) |
| Sibling | Frances "Fanny" Sebree (1830 - 1909) |
| Sibling | John H. Sebree (1832 - 1885) |
| Sibling | Lydia Jane Sebree (1836 - 1928) |
| Sibling | Squire McFarland "Mack" Sebree (1838 - 1901) |
| Sibling | William R. Sebree (1840 - 1896) |
| Sibling | Sarah Ann Sebree (1842 - 1913) |
| Sibling | Elizabeth "Bettie" Sebree (1844 - 1911) |
| Sibling | James Knox Sebree (1846 - 1913) |
| Sibling | Asa Porter Sebree (1847 - 1926) |
| Sibling | Ann Sebree (1849 - ) |
| Sibling | Nimrod B. Sebree (1850 - 1909) |