Epaphroditus H. Seymour, son of Ozias and Mary Louisa (Hager) Seymour, and a grandson of the Hon. Horatio Seymour, United States senator from Vermont, was born in Middlebury, Vt., April 11, 1834, and died there of consumption, April 11, 1864. He prepared for college in the schools of Rutland, Shelburne and Middlebury, Vt., and entered the University in 1851, remaining nearly three years.
He worked in a machine shop in Troy, N.Y., 1855-56; was with Bruff Bros. & Seaver & Seaver, hardware dealers in New York City and Brooklyn, 1856-61. He possessed
great mechanical ingenuity and inventive genius; in his college days his room was a real work shop, being supplied with various mechanical appliances and materials for his inventions and experiments in steam engine construction. The cadets of his day had many scares from explosions and bursts of steam from the cast iron boiler used in connection with his stove. During the time he was in New York and Brooklyn, he spent his spare time studying naval construction and subjects pertaining to mechanical engineering. He spent much time in the great naval machine shops watching the construction of the marine engines. Early in 1861, he was one of some thirteen hundred given a commission in the navy. He was an engineer on the gun boat, Ottawa, Du Font's squadron, and on his first voyage contracted the disease from which he died. He was at the taking of Beaufort, S.C., the only important service in which he shared; was confined in the New York Naval Hospital 1862-63. He was not married, and is survived by a sister, Mrs. Lucy Seymour Edgerton of Middlebury, Vt. (from Norwich University: Her History, Her Graduates, Her Roll of Honor, Vol. 2, compiled by William A. Ellis; pub. by Capitol City Press, Montpelier, Vt., 1911)

A member of the Norwich University Class of 1855