Representative Adam Seybert

Adam Seybert (May 16, 1773 – May 2, 1825) was an American physician, mineralogist, academic, and politician who served as a Democratic-Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Pennsylvania’s 1st congressional district from 1809 to 1815 and from 1817 to 1819. A prominent Philadelphian, he was a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania and an early American scientific figure who organized what is regarded as the first mineralogy collection in the United States in the 1790s.

Seybert was born on May 16, 1773, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He pursued higher education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied medicine and received his medical degree in 1793. His early scholarly interests extended beyond medicine to natural science, particularly mineralogy, which would shape much of his later reputation. Soon after graduation, he began contributing to scientific discourse, including work that appeared in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.

Following his medical degree, Seybert continued his education in Europe, attending leading institutions in Edinburgh, Göttingen, and Paris. In Paris he studied mineralogy at the École des Mines, and he is noted as the first American to study mineralogy in Germany. During these years abroad he assembled an extensive collection of minerals, crystals, and rocks, which he brought back to the United States. Upon returning to Philadelphia, he briefly practiced as a physician before establishing himself as a “druggist, chemist and apothecary,” combining his medical training with his growing expertise in chemistry and mineralogy. He joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, further cementing his role in the city’s intellectual and scientific life.

In the 1790s, Seybert organized what is recognized as the first mineralogy collection in the United States. This collection eventually grew to contain more than 1,725 crystals and rocks and became a significant resource for early American mineralogists. The noted mineralogist Benjamin Silliman traveled to Philadelphia specifically to view Seybert’s collection and to have Seybert analyze specimens from Silliman’s own holdings. Seybert’s scientific output included works such as “An Inaugural Dissertation: Being an Attempt to Disprove the Doctrine of the Putrefaction of the Blood of Living Animals” (Philadelphia: T. Dobson, 1793) and “Experiments and Observations on Land and Sea Air,” published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society in 1799. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1797, reflecting his standing in the scientific community, and later was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1824.

Seybert’s growing public profile and intellectual reputation helped propel him into national politics. In 1809, he was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Eleventh Congress from Pennsylvania’s 1st congressional district to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Benjamin Say. As a member of the Republican (Democratic-Republican) Party representing Pennsylvania, he contributed to the legislative process during four terms in office, serving during a formative period in the early republic. He was reelected to the Twelfth and Thirteenth Congresses, serving continuously from 1809 to 1815. During the Twelfth Congress he was chairman of the United States House Committee on Revisal and Unfinished Business, a position that placed him at the center of managing pending and incomplete legislative matters. In the fall of 1811, on the eve of the War of 1812, he reassured President James Madison that Pennsylvania possessed the military equipment and production capacity necessary to meet anticipated war needs, underscoring his involvement in national defense and wartime preparation.

After a brief interval out of office, Seybert returned to Congress when he was again elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Fifteenth Congress, serving from 1817 to 1819. Across his four terms, from 1809 to 1815 and from 1817 to 1819, he participated in debates and votes during a significant period in American history, including the War of 1812 and its aftermath, representing the interests of his Philadelphia constituents while engaging in the broader democratic process of the early United States. His political career increasingly demanded his attention, and by 1812 he chose to sell his mineralogy collection to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. When the mineralogist Parker Cleaveland wrote to him in December 1813 with questions on mineralogy, Seybert replied that his political responsibilities had led him to lose interest in the science, marking a turning point from scientific to public life. After his death, the mineral collection he had assembled and later sold was placed on display at the Free Natural History Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

In his later years, Seybert devoted more time to travel and scholarly pursuits outside of formal office. After leaving Congress in 1819, he visited Europe from 1819 to 1821, and he returned again in 1824. During this period he published “Statistical Annals: Embracing Views of the Population, Commerce, Navigation, Fisheries, Public Lands, Post-Office Establishment, Revenues, Mint, Military and Naval Establishments, Expenditures, Public Debt and Sinking Fund of the United States of America” (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson & Son, 1818), a comprehensive statistical survey of the young nation that reflected his analytical bent and interest in public finance and administration. His intellectual legacy is further documented in materials such as the “Adam Seybert commonplace book, 1810,” held by the American Philosophical Society Library.

Seybert ultimately settled in Paris, France, where he died on May 2, 1825. He was originally interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, one of the city’s most prominent burial grounds. His remains were later reinterred at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, returning him to the city of his birth and principal career. His family’s name continued to be associated with intellectual inquiry at the University of Pennsylvania through the Adam Seybert Professor in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, a chair endowed by his son, Henry Seybert. The duties of this chair initially included hosting the Adam Seybert committee, which from 1883 to 1887 investigated claims concerning the spirit world. The committee reported that it was unable to discover any evidence supporting such phenomena, and subsequent holders of the chair were relieved of any obligation to continue these investigations, leaving the professorship as a more conventional academic appointment in philosophy.