Flora Warren Seymour

Flora Warren Seymour was born as Flora Warren Smith in Cleveland, Ohio,^[5] to Eleanor De Forest (née Potter) and Charles Payne Smith.

She spent the majority of her childhood in the Washington D.C. area. She received her B.A. degree, Davis Prize in oratory,^[6][1][7] Enosinian Society from George Washington University^[1] LL. B. degree from Washington College of Law^[1] and LL. M. degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law.^[8][1]

She was at the Indian Service while completing her degrees.^{[citation needed]}

In 1916, she was admitted to the Illinois bar.^{[citation needed]} She worked as a lawyer in Chicago.^[9]

In 1919, she was admitted to the practice of law before the United States Supreme Court.^{[citation needed]}

"Several former commissioners, such as Flora Warren Seymour and Dr. C.C. Lindquist, continued to oppose Collier and his reform agenda." ^[10]

On 5 October 1922, Flora Warren Seymour was appointed to the Board of Indian Commissioners.^[11]

"Such a proposition implies that while Menominees are not to be trusted individually with a farm apiece, for fear they will lose it, they can collectively be given not only the land, but the management of large power and timber interests, the running of a big sawmill, with the railroad and other activities it entails. Out of nineteen hundred incapacities is to arise a great super-capacity. The whole is to be several times the sum of its parts. The mere statement of this proposition indicates its impractionbility."^[12] - Flora Warren Seymour

Many of Seymour's books were about Native Americans.

"White women appointees to the Indian Bureau during the Gilded Age like Florence Etheridge and Flora Warren leveraged maternalistic guardianship over Native peoples into potent examples of civic authority for the women’s suffrage movement. By contrast, some Native employees like Gertrude Bonnin, a Sioux woman, became staunch defenders of tribal sovereignty and cultural autonomy."^[13]

She was, for a time, the editor of Quest magazine and the assistant editor of the Women Lawyers Journal.^[14]

With her husband^[15] she helped found the Order of Bookfellows^[16] - a Chicago-based literary society (subscription-based publishing) and then served as its executive head.^[14] She also helped publish and edit its organ, the monthly magazine The Step-Ladder^[17] from 1919 through 1943,^[18][19] which featured prose and poetry by its members.^{[20][21][22][14][23][24][25][18]}

In 1928, The Step Ladder offered three poetry prizes: the George Sterling Memorial Prize; the Sperling Sonnet Prize; and the Jeannette Chappel Competition.^[26]

Notable members of the Order of Bookfellows include: Esther Nelson Karn, Elizabeth Anne Wells Cannon, Frederick Starr, Elkanah East Taylor, and Grace Porterfield Polk.

In 1915, she married George Steele Seymour (1877-1945), an author, an assistant general auditor, who joined the Pullman Co. in 1910, and was a member of the Illinois bar.

She lived at 431 S. Dearborn St.,^[1] 5529 Dorchester Ave.,^[1] and 4917 Blackstone Avenue in Chicago.^[5] She died in Chicago on December 10, 1948.^[27]