Seymour Howard Stone was born on 11 June 1867 in Hampton, Virginia, the son of George Whitefield and Catherine Graupner Stone. He and his younger brothers Ralph and Fred were raised in Wilmington, Delaware, where his father owned a successful marine machinery business and was active in civic and Republican Party affairs. In the mid-1880s Stone attended the Swarthmore Preparatory School in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania; the enthusiasms mentioned in his letters home—sports, the outdoors, minerology and natural history—had little to do with his coursework. In fact, the young Stone was preoccupied with the idea of farming or ranching in the West. This wish was realized in 1888, when with his father's somewhat reluctant support he filed a claim on 160 acres of land near La Jara in the high San Luis Valley of south-central Colorado (Conejos County). Prior to improving his claim Stone worked as a hand at North Farm ranch near Monte Vista, in Rio Grande County (May to August 1888). In 1889 he lived on and worked his property at La Jara, growing wheat and other crops, but by the end of the season was ready to assent to his father's wish that he return east. In the early 1890s Stone was involved in the Florida phosphate boom, working at a plant owned by the Pharr Phosphate Company of Bartow, Polk County (whose ownership appears to have had Wilmington connections). By the summer of 1894 the phosphate bubble was collapsing and Stone was seeking alternate employment. By 1900 he had settled in Boston, and soon thereafter married Amy Wentworth of Danvers, Massachusetts. By 1911 he was Secretary of the Boston Association for the Relief and Control of Tuberculosis, and appears to have been employed by American anti-tubercular societies for many years. He died after 1930.