Frederic Kimber Seward was born in Wilmington in 1878. He was one of the children of Reverend Samuel Swezey Seward II and Christina Frederika Kimber. Frederic had 6 other siblings, including homeopathic physician John Perry Seward. Frederic graduated from Columbia University in 1899 with a law degree and was a prominent member of the "Glee Club" during his college life.
On August 30, 1902, at the age of 24, he married Sarah Flemington Day, with whom he had three children: Kimber, Katherine, and Samuel Swayze Seward. In 1908, he began working at the Curtis, Mallet, Prevol & Colt law firm in New York.
After having been on a 2-month business trip in Europe, Frederic boarded the RMS Titanic in Southampton on April 10, 1912 to return to the United States. He travelled in First Class. At the time the Titanic hit the iceberg (night of April 14-15, 1912), Frederic was playing bridge with Dorothy Winifred Gibson and William Thomson Sloper in the First Class lounge. Frederic managed to get on lifeboat 7, thanks to the insistence of his friend Dorothy of his. He and his two companions managed to survive the sinking.
While returning to New York aboard the RMS Carpathia, Frederic organized a group of other survivors to honor the bravery and efforts of Captain Arthur Henry Rostron and his crew. The Captain was presented with a silver cup with inscriptions and medals to home one of the 320 crew members. The group that honored the captain was made up of: Karl Howell Behr, Margaret Brown, Mauritz Håkan Björnström-Steffansson, Frederic Oakley Spedden, Isaac Gerald Frauenthal, and George Achilles Harder.
After the disaster, Frederic Seward filed a joint lawsuit with many survivors towards the White Star Line and was the legal representative of John Montgomery Smart, who perished, searching for his children and working on the liquidation of his estate. He and John were very close friends way back 8 years and knew each other well. Beginning in 1916, Frederic was a member of the Board of Directors of George Gustav Heye's Museum of the American Indian.
In 1943, Frederic Kimber Seward passed away at the age of 65 due to heart failure. His body was cremated at the Fresh Pond Crematory and Columbarium in Middle Village, Queens County, New York and the whereabouts of his ashes is unknown.