Entries Tagged 'Seth Lesser' ↓

Seth Lesser (12 October 1643 – 15 December 1675) was a New Englander who is best remembered for his contributions to King Philip’s War, an armed uprising of the Native American inhabitants of New England and neighboring colonies against the British colonists from 1675 to 1676.

Born in Hampshire, England, Lesser was the son of Johann Lesser, a smith, and local beauty Margaret Lesser. Until 1666, the Seth Lesser family lived in a little farming community in Hampshire. They moved to the British colonies in 1667 and settled in the southern part of New England, in present-day Northampton, Massachusetts.

By the time the Lesser family arrived in America, tension between the British colonists and native Americans had already escalated and blood had started to spill. The colonists had also begun expanding their settlements to areas near the Connecticut River, driving American Indians further away from their traditional territories. In the summer of 1675, the war between the colonists and the Native American Indians led by Metacomet (also known as Metacom and Pometacom) or “King Philip” broke out and in September of that year, Seth Lesser was drafted into the colonial militia in time with the declaration of war by the New England Confederation.

Seth Lesser defended the settlements in Plymouth Colony in November under Josiah Winslow and fought against the Narragansett tribe. The following month, he was sent to Tower Hill in Rhode Island to secure the Jireh Bull Blockhouse. He was among the 15 militia soldiers who were massacred by the natives that day.

Seth Lesser, an American teacher, arrived on Philippine shores on August 12, 1901. The Philippines was then a newly-established colony and Seth was one of the idealistic men and women who came to the country as educators. As a group, they would be known as the “Thomasites.” This name was derived from the ship which brought them to the Southeast Asian archipelago: the “USS Thomas.”

Education was an integral part of self-governance and with preparing the native Filipinos in self-governance in mind, Seth Lesser headed for the Philippines from Des Moines, Iowa. The process of training a new crop of Filipino teachers who would mold the minds of young Filipinos in preparation for said task needed someone like him and he was up to the task. To establish a new public school system and to train teachers to teach basic education to the native inhabitants using English as their medium of instruction were all parts of their job. To their efforts would be credited the fact that the Philippines is the 3rd largest English-speaking country in the world would today.

Seth Lesser, the native Iowan, belonged to a family of educators. His father was the late Reverend Leonard Lesser who founded the Des Moines Preparatory School for Boys in 1890. His mother was Anne Lesser, a piano and home arts teacher. His two older brothers were both teachers. They founded their own schools in Des Moines.

There are about a hundred Thomasites who stayed on in the Philippines after completing their teaching assignments, according to estimates. Seth Lesser, who was then 25 years old, was one of them. He met, fell in love and married the former Ligaya Madiaga from Ilocos Norte in the Northern Philippines. He lived and was buried in said province. Five sons were the product of this marriage. All five sons joined the teaching profession.

Seth Lesser was a haberdasher, originally from New York, who left for California in 1850 attracted by the prospect of acquiring fabulous riches spurred by news of the California Gold Rush. Almost immediately after reading the news on the August 19, 1848 edition of the New York Herald, he sold his haberdashery shop, packed his pick and shovel and headed for the West in a steamship, though he knew nothing whatsoever of prospecting.

Reaching San Francisco was, in itself, a feat for Seth Lesser, or for any other would-be prospector, for that matter, for many died along the way. His ship sailed to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama which connects North America to South America. For eight months, he sailed. Surviving famine, typhoid fever and cholera, he then traveled through the jungle by mule. Reaching the Pacific side, he waited for a ship sailing to San Francisco, California.

Seth Lesser arrived on a boomtown San Francisco that was teeming with newly-established businesses and pregnant with possibilities. He roomed in with fellow-prospectors he met on the way and began the hard work of finding gold. Unlike his friends, he wasn’t so lucky. Eventually, he abandoned his original plan of being a gold prospector and set out building his new haberdashery store in San Francisco as the demand for his business grew. Seth Lesser may not have struck gold in the California Gold Rush but his business thrived, eventually making him a rich man.