Meet Jennie Seelye
Mother’s Day 2024 promises to be very special on the Abilene and Smoky Valley Railroad’s Smoky Valley Limited dinner train. The A&SV is offering two trains that make perfect Mother’s Day presents and highlight Abilene’s colorful past.
On Saturday, May 12, the Limited will have two runs at 2:00 and 6:00 p.m. The 6:00 p.m. train will be a special Mother’s Day-eve dinner prepared by Abilene caterer Lucinda Kohman, with chicken cordon-bleu and white wine sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, green beans almondine, with rolls and butter and a scrumptious Chantilly cake for dessert.
But at 2:00 p.m., the Limited will present a taste of Abilene’s past with a special tribute to socialite Jennie Seeley, the leading hostess of Abilene’s more elite social circles for nearly 40 years. “Jennie Seelye’s Tea Party” will feature finger sandwiches and four desserts once prepared by Seeley Mansion cooks, recreated by Amanda Collins of Amanda’s Bakery and Bistro. A fine British black tea will be served. The train will present a special narration about the dinners, receptions and parties given by the Seeleys.
The story begins in 1904, when Jennie Seelye accompanied her husband, pharmaceutical manufacturer A.B. Seeley, to the St. Louis World’s Fair. Armed with blueprints of her dream home, a three story Georgian style mansion, Jennie went on a lavish $55,000 shopping spree to find carpet, draperies, and furnishings for their new home before it was even built.
Mrs. Seeley’s shopping trip took three weeks. After all, furnishing an 11,000 square foot, 25-room mansion takes time. But her dream home, which, incidentally, cost more to furnish than to build, would nonetheless reflect the charm of Victorian America and give Jennie a chance to do something she loved: entertain.
Construction on the mansion began in 1904, and when the project was completed in 1905, the resulting structure was breathtaking and was the talk of the entire state of Kansas. The Seelyes had built a home that would dominate the Abilene social scene and stand today as an effulgent symbol of Abilene’s once-thriving entrepreneurial business culture.
The receptions, luncheons, dinners, and parties that were held in the home for the next 40 years were impressive, to say the least. The first dinner party was at Christmas time in 1905 honoring Mr. Seelye’s parents on their 50th wedding anniversary. Guests were served on fine china, silverware, cloth napkins, and elegant stemmed glassware, all adorned by silver candlesticks (items that are still on display in the home).
The 1905 Christmas dinner set the pattern for what mansion guests would come to expect in a house that was built to entertain. According to Terry Tietjens, today’s owner of the Seelye Mansion, the Seelyes hired a domestic staff that included two live-in cooks, who helped Jennie organize her dinners and parties that sometimes had guest lists for hundreds of people. The mansion became the hub of Abilene’s social scene, and guest lists often included names that are symbolic of the city’s business culture: Brown, Kuney, Mollott, Dieter, Kirby, Linz, and many more who held positions of prominence in the city.
But the Seelye influence extended far beyond the Abilene city limits. A.B. Seelye often hosted pharmaceutical industry colleagues, including Eli Lilly, whose family often accompanied Lilly to Abilene and stayed at the mansion. The Seelyes were active in Republican politics, and mansion guests often included governors, congressional representatives, and local politicians. Perhaps most prominent were national political celebrities, including President Theodore Roosevelt and 1936 Republican Presidential nominee Alf Landon.
The Seelye Mansion has 11 bedrooms, a feature that came in handy when hosting out-of-town visitors. Guests arrived by train and were picked up at either the Union Pacific, Santa Fe or Rock Island depots by the Seelye’s chauffeur, who escorted the guests to the mansion in the family’s 1907 Ford Model K limousine. According to Tietjens, the Eli Lilly family was always accompanied by their own staff, all of whom needed their own sleeping accommodations.
As might be expected, the events at the Seelye Mansion were lavish affairs. For dinner parties, Jennie installed a 14-leaf dining room table that could seat up to 30 people. Formal dress was required, a tradition that the Seeliyes practiced even for private daily family dining. Dinners were often mixed with conversation and could last as long as two hours. Following dinner, guests adjourned to other locations. Women would assemble in the parlor, while men often went to the basement for a game of bowling, an extravagance purchased at the 1904 World’s Fair.
Music was a prominent feature in the mansion. Dinners and parties often adjourned to the third floor, where a giant ballroom featured a piano and an organ. The Seelyes often hired orchestras for dances and concerts, and their oldest daughter, Marion, was a concert pianist who sometimes provided music in the background for social functions.
Regardless of the event, there were two rules beyond the dress code that guests had to remember: smoking was forbidden, and alcohol would never be allowed. Instead of fine wines, mansion guests would have been served coffee, tea, and lemonade. “This was a Methodist family,” said Tietjens, “and they disallowed any activity that went against the teachings of the church.”
Local historians have chronicled the 1906 Christmas party at the mansion, where Jennie’s guest list exceeded 300 people, including an honored guest, Kansas Governor Edward Hoch. The event was held on the day after Christmas, and was a full banquet, with a hired orchestra playing holiday music in the background. Although the event was a success, there were some snags in the planning. Jennie had ordered red roses to be shipped by train from southern California. Red roses were the common Christmas flower of the day, and Jennie wanted the flower in every room. The florist panicked because it was difficult to fill the order in December, so he shipped the inventory of roses he had and accompanied them with another plant to augment Jennie’s needs: a new flower from Mexico called the “poinsettia.” Jennie gasped in disgust at the appearance of the poinsettia when the flowers arrived by train and were brought to the mansion. But the Mexican plant was nonetheless used to augment the preferred red roses, and she was astonished when guests loved the new type of flower, which is believed to be one of the initial showings of the poinsettia in Kansas. And the flower has been featured in the Mansion every holiday season since that time.
Jennie Seelye also loved to entertain her social circle of businesswomen, or at least, the wives of business and political leaders, and members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and those receptions and tea parties are legendary. The smaller events were accented by tea or coffee, finger sandwiches, and lavish desserts. Seelye daughters Marion and Helen recalled that he 1904 World’s Fair most impressed them because of the innovations in food that were on display. For example, they had never been exposed to ice cream. The family also enjoyed sorbets and funnel cakes. As a result, Jennie purchased the equipment for making these items and often served those items at parties or as desserts at dinners. Those tools are on display for visitors today.
When considering the persons of prominence who entered the doors of the mansion, it is perhaps surprising to not hear one name: Eisenhower.
“We always tell our mansion tourists that the Eisenhowers were not guests here because the lived on the south side of the tracks,” said Tietjens.
“In reality, the Seelyes were just in a different social circle. They associated with businesspeople,” he said, noting that Abilene’s more prominent businessmen and Seelye associates lived on the north side of the city. Moreover, while A.B. and Jennie Seelye lived long enough to observe Dwight Eisenhower’s distinguished military career, they did not live to see the general elected President of the United States. A.B. died in 1948, and Jennie passed away in 1952.
According to Tietjens, the days of the fancy parties and dinners ended in the late 1930s, as the once-thriving Seelye manufacturing business fell on hard times, faced with the realities of increased market competition at a time when competitors were mechanized.
“The Seelye company was founded as a horse and buggy business,” Tietjens explained. “All products were packaged by hand, filling each bottle one at a time. They never modernized.”
Although the Seelyes are long gone, today’s visitors can still sense the grandness of Jennie’s parties, receptions, and dinners. The fine china, stemware, silverware, candlesticks and grand furnishings remain as monument to the memories of Jennie’s lavish parties and the many prominent people who once visited Jennie’s dream home. And the mansion remains as a fitting tribute to a colorful chapter in Kansas social, political, and entrepreneurial history.
Jennie Seelye Mother's Day Train