George Escol Sellers (1808-1899) was an American businessman, mechanical engineer, and inventor. He is associated with designing railroad locomotives and related equipment.
Early life
Sellers was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 26, 1808.[1] He was born in a house located between Fifth and Sixth Street near the first United States Mint in a neighborhood known as Mulberry Court. Sellers was the second son of Coleman Sellers (1781-1834) and his wife Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786-1859). He had an older brother Charles, born in 1806; two older sisters Elizabeth, born in 1810; and Anna, born in 1824; and two older brothers Harvey, born in 1813; and Coleman II, born in 1827. His paternal grandfather Nathan Sellers (married to Elizabeth Coleman) was known for the art of making wire paper molds. His father and many ancestors had been engineers; his maternal grandfather was Charles Willson Peale. He was educated at common schools and studied for five years with Anthony Bolmar at his academy in West Chester, Pennsylvania.[1] [2]
Mid life and career
Sellers first obtained employment of his father's and grandfather's firm of Nathan & David Sellers, after completing his education in private schools in Philadelphia. The business made machinery for producing wire and paper. His elder brother Charles was employed with the company. It was this work that furnished inspiration for Sellers' many engineering writings. Nathan Sellers died in 1830 and the business was reorganized. Coleman Sellers and his two sons then ran the business. There was a national financial depression in 1837 and the company then became insolvent and closed.[1] [2]
Sellers then removed to Cincinnati with his brother Charles and established a factory for making lead pipe from hot fluid lead. He patented his invention of the machinery that was capable of doing this. This business was eventually sold out and merged into a company that was a major producer of lead pipe in the United States. Sellers then partnered with Josiah Lawrence, a Cincinnati businessman, and organized Globe Rolling Mills and Wire Works. Here he introduced machinery of his own design that was more efficient in producing lead pipe and wire. Eventually he sold his interest in the company by 1850. In 1851 he undertook the manufacture of railroad locomotives for the Panama Railway. He invented a railroad engine for climbing mountains of heavy inclined planes. Sellers was engaged in the manufacture and sale of railroad equipment for several years in the 1850s. Sellers became interested in mining operations in southern Illinois in the 1860s. He spent the remainder of his career pursuing mechanical engineering and design.[1][2]
Hobbies
Sellers had a deep interest in archaeology. He wrote several articles relating to the relics of the mound builders of Illinois. One published by Smithsonian Institution was on the aborigines' method of making earthenware salt pans. He also wrote detailed articles on how the local American Indians made the arrowheads and stone age tools.[1][2]
Later life and death
Upon his retirement from active life, Mr. Sellers removed to Chattanooga, Tenn., where, having secured a home for himself on Mission Ridge, he spent the remainder of his life among congenial and appreciative friends. It was from this Southern home that he contributed his engineering reminiscences to the "American Machinist." Beside his mechanical ability, Mr. Sellers had from his early boyhood a decided taste for art, and possessed no little skill as a painter. This talent was doubtless cultivated and encouraged through close association with his grandfather, Charles Willson Peale, and his uncle, Rembrandt Peale. When he was but sixteen years of age, Thomas Sulley, the artist, recognizing his ability, urged him to adopt portrait painting as a profession, and offered to take him as a pupil. Although his decided tasti for mechanics determined his course of life, h-; always remained in touch with art, and counted among his friends many of the prominent painters, draftsmen and illustrators of the day. Although feeble in body, Mr. Sellers' mental faculties were but little impaired by his advanced age, and he contributed many interesting pages to his personal memoirs until within a very short time of his death.[1][2]
Societies
Sellers had talent as an artist. With others he organized one of the earliest social organizations of artists in Philadelphia. Sellers was deeply interested in archeological research pertaining to the American Indians and developed a collection of pottery and implements of the prehistoric tribes of the Ohio valley.[1][2]
Inventions and patents
He was an able engineer and mechanic and took out many patents relating to the various arts in which he was from time to time engaged including improvements in locomotives, particularly the type he built for the Panama Railway.[1] He invented a hill climbing railroad locomotive that was defined as a boiler and gearing of locomotive-engines for working heavy grades, patented as US7498 A granted July 9, 1850.[1][2]
Sellers invented processes for making paper from vegetable fiber. He designed machinery for the manufacture of pipes continuously from molten lead and was given patent number US1908 A on December 17, 1840, for the machinery.[1][2]
Legacy
Coincidentally Mark Twain in his novel The Gilded Age has a fictional character called Colonel Mulberry Sellers. This is explained further at the beginning of Twain's later novel The American Claimant as being Sellers of Philadelphia, who sued to have his name removed from the novel. While the next editions of Twain's novel removed the name "George Escol" he ultimately put in the name "Mulberry Sellers" - which just happens to be the neighborhood where Sellers was raised in Philadelphia.[3][4] In fact, this unwanted connection continued to be repeated, even unto Sellers's obituaries.[4]
Reference
Sources
- Cope, Gilbert (1904). Genealogical and Personal Memoirs. Higginson Book Company.
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- McGraw-Hill (1899). American Machinist. McGraw-Hill.
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- Twain, Mark (1898). The American Claimant. Harper & Brothers.
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