Early life Seamans was born June 5, 1854, in
Ilion, New York to Abner Clark Seamans and Caroline Matilda Williams. Seamans began work as a clerk at
E. Remington and Sons, the firm at which his father was a purchasing agent, at the age of fifteen. In 1875, he began a three-year stint of overseeing a
silver mine in
Bingham Canyon, Utah. Upon returning to the state of
New York, Seamans became a bookkeeper and salesman at Fairbanks & Company, a scale manufacturer. Fairbanks had become the sole marketer of the
Sholes and Glidden typewriter, produced by Seaman's former employer, E. Remington and Sons. After 1879, Seamans lived in
Brooklyn with his wife Ida Gertrude Watson and their two daughters, Mabel and Dorothy.
Involvement with the Remington typewriter In 1881, marketing of the typewriter returned to Remington. Seamans had been a "star typewriter salesman" and was retained and made manager of sales. The following year, Seamans partnered with
Harry H. Benedict, a Remington director, and
William O. Wyckoff, a Remington sales agent, to form the firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict. In 1886, Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict purchased the typewriter business from Remington and, in 1892, formed the Remington Standard Typewriter Company with Seamans as the treasurer and general manager. A year later, Seamans was made president of the Union Typewriter Company, a
trust formed from the merger of Remington Standard with several prominent typewriter manufacturers. Seamans presided over the acquisition of the Wahl Adding Machine Company, which made Union the world's largest typewriter company. ==Notes==