A cast brass folding bootjack, resembling an old style percussion pocket pistol when closed. Rare.
THE SETH NELSON GROUP OF EARLY PENNSYLVANIA HUNTING EQUIPMENT.
Seth Iredell 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 is now sold commercially under the name of "Nessmuk Axe".
76. HUNTING KNIFE. L. 11-1/2"