Pioneer Information
Born in Alton, Illinois, Seavey received her education at the Jacksonville Seminary in Jacksonville, Illinois. Upon her marriage in 1876, she relocated to Chicago. From 1893 to 1897 Seavey contributed to Garden and Forest, a journal established by Charles Sprague Sargent and published from 1888 to 1897. When it ceased publication, she began writing for Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening. Her monthly column “Improvement Associations” appeared in Park and Cemetery from 1901 to 1904. In it Seavey covered such topics as the improvement of school grounds, trees and tree planting, and women as landscape gardeners. In 1901 she wrote a series on women in business for the Current Topics Club, serialized in the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Record Herald, which included a piece entitled “Women in Horticulture.” In “Railroad Gardening,” published in the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture in 1903, Seavey advocated the use of hardy trees and skillfully arranged shrubs rather than ornamental gardening for railroad station grounds. Her address entitled, “The Possibilities of Small Home Grounds,” given to the American Park and Outdoor Art Association in 1903, encouraged homeowners to blend their plantings with those of adjoining properties. Seavey published an article entitled “Trees on Small Home Grounds” in the Chautauquan in 1905. She also contributed to the Chicago Tribune, writing about European and Japanese gardens and residential landscape architecture.
In the early 1900s Seavey held leadership roles in the American Park and Outdoor Art Association, serving on the Committee of Local Improvement, and the American Civic Association upon its creation in 1904. Seavey passed away from heart failure in Los Angeles at the age of 68 and was buried in Brighton, Illinois, where she had spent much of her youth.
