By The Family of Catryna Ten Eyck Seymour
A WOMAN OF MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Mrs. Seymour co-founded several environmental and cultural committees in her lifetime. Photo by T. Seymour, Jr.
Catryna Ten Eyck Seymour was born in New York City on June 30, 1931. She passed away on December 2, 2017 in Torrington, Connecticut and is survived by her husband of 66 years, Whitney North Seymour, Jr., and daughters Tryntje and Gabriel.
Mrs. Seymour attended the Brearley School (Class of 1949) and Smith College (Class of 1953). She later attended the Art Students League and served as Secretary on the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York.
As the partner to Whitney, who was also known as ‘Mike,’ Mrs. Seymour worked to establish ‘vest pocket parks’ during his tenure as President of the Park Association of the City of New York (from 1963 to 1965). Together, they formed the citizens’ organizing committee of the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference to help save Storm King Mountain (located on the Hudson River) from a Con Edison storage plant. Their efforts led to early work in establishing the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1969.
In 1973, Mrs. Seymour authored Enjoying the Southwest (Lippincott, 1973), an early guide to the cultures and history of the American Southwest. Along with Arthur Schlesinger and Cyrus Vance, she co-founded the Friends of the National Museum of the American Indian Committee, which lobbied for the establishment of the National Museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Seymour’s screen paintings are in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She has been listed as a painter on Clara®, the database of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
In 2001, Mrs. Seymour co-founded the Friends of the Millay Society at Steepletop, in Austerlitz, New York. There, she created the poetry-walking trail using poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Funeral arrangements are private.
This obituary was originally published in The New York Times on December 6, 2017. It has been edited by WestView News.
