Nelson and his son, Seth Nelson, Jr., have long been
regarded as two of the most renowned and resourceful big game hunters
and armorers of Central Pennsylvania. At their home and hunting lodge
on the Sinnemahoning at the foot of Altar Rock, famed in Indian lore,
they maintained a gunshop and forge, making or repairing many of their
own guns, knives, ammunition, etc., as well as their axes, saws,
cant-hooks, farming implements and the like. Many of their choicest
specimens are now in Dr. Henry C. Mercer's Museum at Doylestown, Pa.
Seth Iredell Nelson was born in Potter County, Pa. in 1809, the
descendant of a Scotch "kramer" who went to Germany in the 17th
Century with the ancestor of Col. John Hay, author of "Little
Breeches" and Theodore Roosevelt's great Secretary of State. Nelson
migrated to Clinton County in 1840, the journey being made in
pole-boats down Kettle Creek and up the West Branch of the Susquehanna
to the mouth of the Sinnemahoning, and settling in a community still
inhabited by the Seneca Indians. He became known as the King Hunter of
the Sinnemahoning, his game book showing hundreds of panthers, wolves
and elk and thousands of deer, bears, and wildcats, and other animals
which he captured during his long career in the Pennsylvania big game
fields. Seth Iredell Nelson died in 1905, and is buried on top of
Karthaus Mountain, overlooking the one-time hunting paradise where for
nearly a century he was the supreme ruler. Seth Nelson, Jr. was born
in Potter County in 1838 and was brought to Three Runs, Clinton
County, by his parents two years later. He is today a handsome old
man, with keen blue eyes, regular features, long hair and snow white
beard, hale and hearty at four score and ten. He accompanied his
father on most of his great hunts and was his devoted and able
assistant in his gunshop and forge. Even in late years he has turned
out guns complete--"lock, stock and barrel" and hunting knives of
unusual skill and workmanship.

74. HUNTING KNIFE. L. 10"

Staghorn handle. This is of similar design, as, though of much later
date, than the scalping knives used by such Eighteenth Century
frontiersmen as Covenhoven, the Groves, Van Campen, Van Gundy and
others. Mounted in pewter.

75. SETH NELSON'S SENECA TYPE AXE. L. 13"

This type of axe or tomahawk was designed by John Smoke, one of the
last Seneca Indians residing in Pennsylvania. Initials punched on
blade, "S. N." Double edge. This sort of tomahawk