USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial and revolutionary families of Pennsylvania; genealogical and personal memoirs, Volume IV > Part 21
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the rights of the Colonists by force of arms during the Revolution, he was dis- owned by the Society of Friends, in which his ancestors had held membership for a century. He continued to give loyal support to the patriot cause throughout the struggle, and at its close was elected to the General Assembly, but declined to serve. He represented Delaware County in the State Constitutional Convention of 1790, and was elected to the State Senate, the first to serve. under the Constitution then adopted, for Delaware County, and served one term. John Sellers married, April 26, 1749, Ann Gibson, daughter of Nathan and Ann (Hunt-Blunston) Gibson, the former from Westmoreland, England, and the latter the widow of John Blun- ston, Jr. Ann (Gibson) Sellers died April 16, 1905, having survived her husband but little more than a year. Of their children was John (2), of whom further.
(V) JOHN (2) SELLERS, sixth child and fourth son of John (1) and Ann (Gibson) Sellers, was born at "Sellers Hall," Upper Darby, December 1, 1762, died at his country residence, "Hoodland," Upper Darby, where he had conducted farming operations. He was for many years a tanner before becoming a farmer, though he continued to manufacture card leathers for the firm of Nathan & David Sellers, composed of his two elder brothers. John (2) Sellers married, April 27, 1786, Mary Coleman, daughter of Joseph and Mary (Johnson) Coleman, and a sister to the wives of his brothers, Nathan and David. She was a descendant of one of the early Quaker families of New England who suffered persecution from Puri- tans, her ancestors having settled in Massachusetts in 1638. Of the children of John (2) and Mary (Coleman) Sellers was John (3), of whom further.
(VI) JOHN (3) SELLERS, only surviving son of John (2) and Mary (Cole- man) Sellers, was born in Philadelphia, September 29, 1789, and died there July 20, 1878, aged eighty-nine years. He was a miller by trade, and it was he who laid the foundation for the extensive flour milling business conducted by the Mill- bourne Mills Company. He was a devout member of the Society of Friends, an earnest though conservative Abolitionist during slavery days, and one of the earliest members of the Free Soil party. He was a strong advocate of popular education, helped to found and maintain schools in the Upper Darby district and for many years served as treasurer of the board. John (3) Sellers married, April 10, 1817, at Friends Meeting, Wilmington, Delaware, Elizabeth Poole, daughter of William and Sarah (Sharpless) Poole, and a descendant of two old families of Pennsylvania.
Joseph Poole, great-grandfather of Elizabeth (Poole) Sellers, was a son of William Poole, of parish of Bromfield, County Cumberland, England, by his wife, Jeanette Twentyman, and was born in Cumberland in 1704. He came to Pennsyl- vania when a young man and settled in Bucks County, where he married Rebecca Janney, daughter of Abel Janney, born in Cheshire, England, by his wife, Eliza- beth (Stacy) Janney, born in Yorkshire, England, daughter of Mahlon and Rebecca (Ely) Stacy, who came to New Jersey, in 1679, and were the first settlers on the site of Trenton, New Jersey. Thomas Janney, father of Abel, baptized in Cheshire, England, became a minister among Friends, and married Margery Heath, of York- shire, England, and came to Pennsylvania in the ship "Endeavor," arriving in the Delaware River, September 20, 1683, with their four sons, and settled in Bucks County. He was a member of the Provincial Council, many years a justice of Bucks County courts, and a member of the Assembly. Abel Janney was a justice
Eng hy E & Wudams & Frsi
Sellers
1824-1905
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of Bucks County and a member of the Provincial Assembly. Joseph Poole died at Newtown, Bucks County, in 1766. His widow, Rebecca, survived him many years and died in Wilmington, Delaware. They had eight children, of whom Wil- liam, the eldest, settled in Wilmington, Delaware. He married (first) Martha Roberts, and (second) Elizabeth (Shipley) Canby, widow of Oliver Canby, of Wilmington, and daughter of William and Mary (Tatnall) Shipley, of Wilmington.
William Poole, Jr., son of William Poole, by his second wife, Elizabeth (Ship- ley) Canby, was born in Wilmington, Delaware, and married Sarah, daughter of Benjamin Sharpless, by his second wife, Martha, daughter of Benjamin Menden- hall, a minister among Friends in Chester County, by his wife, Lydia Roberts, a native of Wales. He was a son of Benjamin Mendenhall, who came from Wilt- shire, England, and married, in 1689, Ann Pennell, of Chester County. Benja- min Sharpless was a son of Joseph Sharpless, born in Cheshire, England, died in Chester County, by his wife, Lydia, daughter of Ralph and Mary Lewis, who came from Glamorganshire, Wales, in 1683, and settled on the Welsh Tract of Haver- ford and Merion townships. John Sharpless, father of Joseph, and the ancestor of the prominent Chester County family of the name, was a son of Geoffrey Sharp- less, of Wybunbury, Chester County, England, who married Margaret Ashley. John Sharpless embraced Friends' principles, and married Jane Moore, in Cheshire, England, and came to Pennsylvania with his family, landing at Chester, October 14, 1682. William Poole, Jr., and Sarah (Sharpless) Poole had ten children, of whom Elizabeth, the wife of John (3) Sellers, was the eldest.
To John (3) and Elizabeth (Poole) Sellers there were born eleven children, of whom was William, of whom further.
(VII) WILLIAM SELLERS, to whom were accorded honors in America and Europe in recognition of his preeminent abilities as an engineer and manufacturer, and his achievements in the advancement of the mechanic arts, was one of the lead- ing citizens of his generation whose public-spirited activities and accomplishments throughout his career were of far-reaching influence.
William Sellers, the eldest surviving son of John and Elizabeth (Poole) Sellers, was born at Millbourne, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, September 19, 1824. He received his early education in a private school built and maintained in Upper Darby by members of the Sellers family for the education of their own and neigh- bors' children. Subsequently he served an apprenticeship to the machinist's trade under his uncle, John Morton Poole, of Wilmington, Delaware, and here began the development of those talents with which nature had endowed him, and which were to lead him to the foremost position that he attained in the engineering world. In 1845, at the age of twenty-one years, he entered the machine shop of Fairbanks, Bancroft & Company, at Providence, Rhode Island, where he had three years' practical experience to qualify him for the conduct of a business on his own account, and returning to Philadelphia, in 1848, he began the manufacture of machinists' tools and mill gearing at Thirtieth and Chestnut streets, and subequently joined with his brother-in-law, Edward Bancroft, who, in the meantime, had also removed from Providence, Rhode Island, and was established in Beach Street, Kensington. The business was thereafter conducted under the firm name of Ban- croft & Sellers until the admission of John Sellers, Jr., to a partnership, and upon the death of Mr. Bancroft in 1855, when it became known as William Sellers &
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Company. The growth of the business led to the erection of a new shop at Six- teenth and Pennsylvania avenues in 1853, which was subsequently enlarged and improved, and in due course J. Sellers Bancroft, Coleman Sellers and James C. Brooks were admitted to partnership and later the business was incorporated with William Sellers as president. In the meantime he had extended the field of his operations by organizing the Edge Moor Iron Company in 1868. Of this he was also president and directed the operations of the two enterprises, the constant growth of which brought them in time to mammoth proportions. The Edge Moor Company furnished all the iron structural materials for the buildings of the Cen- tennial Exhibition and also for the Brooklyn Bridge, which they built, with the exception of the suspension cables, furnished by the Roeblings. This bridge was the first in which steel eye-bars were used. At that time the Edge Moor was the largest plant known for building bridges and other structures of iron and steel. The further expansion of William Sellers' interest was noted in 1873, when he became president of the Midvale Steel Company, of Nicetown, Pennsylvania, which he subsequently reorganized, and under his management the works became the first successful producer of material required by the United States Government for steel cannon. The development of the business of the Edge Moor Iron Company turned the inventive ability of Mr. Sellers in new directions, and a long series of mechanical devices was evolved to meet the demand for steel. The works were first started to make wrought iron by mechanical puddling machinery of William Sellers' design, but were subsequently changed to steel bridge construction, and later a department was created for the manufacture of improved steam boilers of various kinds. Each step in this growth called for new machinery and new methods, and throughout the development Mr. Sellers' personality dominated every step. He was ever ready with suggestions for improvement in plant and in appli- ances, and developed ingenious devices, but much was original in conception and design. Among the more striking of these which were among the productions of William Sellers & Company may be mentioned a comprehensive hydraulic plant for making upset rods and eye-bars; the latter were first made by a welding pro- cess and then of steel by upsetting and flattening, and involved the use of a special and original annealing furnace for very long bars. Again there were multiple punches and spacing mechanism for rapidly producing plate girder work without templates, hydraulic riveters, cranes, drills, boring machines, and many other devices for the rapid and effective production of work. Each step developed new requirements and each found him ready with suggestions.
The "Journal of the Franklin Institute," May, 1905, said:
As a designer of machinery William Sellers had certain well defined ideas. Beauty of line and grace of form were insisted on and he early adopted, if he did not invent, the dull lead tint known as "machine gray," which has now almost entirely supplanted the reds and greens and black of the early builders. Fitness for the purpose intended, as he saw it, was the key- note and he had as much horror of unnecessary weight as he had of any other defect in pro- portion. In construction nothing suited him but the best. He was never deterred by consid- eration of cost if he saw a way of improving in design or construction. Absolute honesty of purpose was his dominant characteristic, and he would tolerate no deviation from the stand- ard of workmanship, no matter how tempting might be the occasion. There was no thought of patching defects in workmanship or material. Nothing was "good enough" unless it was perfect. On one occasion, while conducting a friend, who was also engaged in the iron busi- ness, through the works, the latter commented on the absence of any bad castings and asked what method was adopted to prevent their occurrence. "We throw them away," was the reply. Jealous of his reputation, he set a high standard and followed it undeviatingly. He had to a wonderful degree the courage of conviction and would follow out his own conclu-
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sions without hesitation in the face of adverse opinion. In fact, opinions had very little weight with him in professional matters, but he would always listen to reasons, and if the rea- sons appealed to him, he would abandon preconceived convictions readily and without apparent regret. He used to say that he had no pride in invention, and would readily give up an idea on which he had long labored if convinced that something else offered was better. As illustrat- ing William Sellers' mechanical ingenuity and fertility of resources it may be noted that he was granted patents in 1857 and he had patents pending when he died. These numerous patents granted to him alone, or in association with co-inventors, cover a great variety of subjects : machine tools, injectors, a rifling machine, riveters, boilers, hydraulic machinery of various sorts, furnaces, hoists, cranes, steam hammers, steam engines, ordnance, turn-tables, pumps, etc. He also obtained many patents in foreign lands. Probably the best known of his inventions is the spiral gear planer drive, in which the table or platen is moved back and forth by a multi-thread screw on an incline shaft engaging with a rack on the under surface of the table, a device giving the smoothness of a screw drive coupled with the convenience and effi- ciency of the usual methods. It was patented in 1862.
Frederick A. Halsey has aptly defined the late William Sellers' status as an engineer in the following words :
Mr. Sellers had been called the Whitworth of America, the work of the two men being largely on parallel lines and their influence in England and the United States being substan- tially the same. The merit of Mr. Sellers' work is scarcely less than that of Mr. (Sir Joseph) Whitworth, and when considered in connection with the greater difficulties to be met, it is perhaps even greater. The machine building industry in this country was then in a far more primitive condition than in England. The soil of the country was much less receptive of those advanced ideas which form the foundation of Mr. Sellers' work. His work was from the beginning strikingly original, so much so that to those whose ideas were based upon the undeveloped taste of that time they seemed in many cases almost outre. The writer recently saw still in use one of the early special lathes designed by Mr. Sellers for turning railway axles, and so entirely different was it from any form of lathe made at that time that it could scarcely have failed to impress the general observer as a simple oddity. As a matter of fact, it was obviously the result of the keenest analysis of the work to be done and of the strains to be carried by the machine and the result was simply an adaptation of the form of the machine to these strains, a little less than a stroke of genius. While, of course, these machines have been improved and made capable of a much larger output than this early machine of Mr. Sellers', it is nevertheless not exaggerating to say that its ontline forms today a model. It was this adaptation of the forms of his machine to the strains to be carried by them that formed the keynote of Mr. Sellers' method of design, and it was the fact that machines were then designed regardless of such principles that led his forms to appear so strange to those who looked upon the prevailing forms as suitable. Mr. Sellers' methods, however, were soon followed by other designers, and it is safe to say that, so far as modern machines are better in this respect than those of half a century ago, the result is very largely dne to the influence of Mr. Sellers' work. This influence is seen more and more in connection with the most recent designs of machines. The influence of tradition is far stranger in connection with these machines (which in a sense became standard many years ago) than those of recent origin, and it is therefore a curious fact that the most modern outlines are seen in machines upon which the opportunity for improvement has prevailed the longest. Of his individual achievements Mr. Sellers' name is best known in connection with the Sellers of United States Standard Screwthread, which he published in a paper read before the Franklin Institute in 1864, at which time he was president of the Institute. A similar effect toward standardization had been previously made by Sir Joseph Whitworth, and Mr. Sellers' work was no doubt inspired by that of Whitworth. The leading differences between the Sellers and the Whitworth forms lie in the angle of the thread and in the fact that it has a flat top and bottom instead of a round top and bottom. There has been much discussion regarding the merits of these two forms, of which both have their advantages, but it is safe to say that from the strictly practical stand- point (of getting the standard generally adopted) the Sellers form is the only one which would have had any chance of general adoption in this country at that time.
It had the commanding merit that it could be made with a common lathe, too, made in a shop where used, whereas the Whitworth form required a special tool which must be bought from a maker. In addition to the smaller tendency to respect and follow authority in this country as compared with England, lay the physical obstacle due to the widely scattered mechanical centers of the country, the effect of which could only have been to defeat stand- ardization, should the proposed standard involve the purchase of special tools for thread cut- ting. How much of an influence this may have had with Mr. Sellers the writer does not know, but it may well have had a commanding influence.
Illustrative of the fact that Mr. Sellers would not accept or have nothing to do with anything that was not of the best, was an incident which occurred in 1890, when
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the Navy Department of the United States Government at Washington sent to leading manufacturers of machine tools elaborate specifications for an eight-foot turning and boring lathe for sixteen-inch steel cannon. This was a leviathan lathe. Some idea of its dimensions may be gained when it is stated that the main bed was seventy-three feet ten and three-quarter inches long and nine feet wide, the extension bed carrying the boring arrangement was fifty-three feet five inches long and five feet two inches wide, making a total length of one hundred and twenty-eight feet and three and three-fourths inches. The government engineers designed this gigantic machine. Mr. Sellers did not approve of their designs and refused to bid upon them, but he caused new designs to be drawn embodying new principles, differing radically from the Government's drawings. On a day appointed Mr. Sellers appeared in person and explained his design to the board of engineers in Washington, pointing out the merits of his plans and so thoroughly convinced the board of their superiority that they adopted the Sellers plans and discarded their own. This great lathe was built by William Sellers & Company, Incorpo- rated, and installed in the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, District of Columbia, where it has attracted the attention and admiration of engineers from all parts of the world. The total weight of this machine was about 500,000 pounds.
During a visit to England in 1860 the attention of Mr. Sellers was called hy Sharp, Stewart & Company, of Manchester, to the Giffard injector for feed steam boilers, a model of which had been sent by Flaud et Cie, of Paris, for t purpose of interesting English manufacturers. The device was crude in design and was generally regarded as a mechanical paradox and an interesting but unpractical toy. It contained, however, the elements of a novel principle, and Mr. Sellers' immediate estimate of the value of the invention evinces the accuracy of his judg- ment. American rights were at once obtained and royalties paid to Sharp, Stewart & Company until the expiration of the United States patents. The same year a special department devoted to the manufacture was added to the plant of William Sellers & Company, and the first injectors were made from French drawings and patterns. Modifications of the original design were introduced to adapt it to the American market, and the present experimental department established to eradicate defects of construction and to obtain a more complete development of the prin- ciple. The necessity for automatic adjustment was soon observed, and Mr. Sellers invented and patented, in 1865, the self-adjusting combining tube, which auto- matically adjusted the supply of water to meet the requirements of varying steam pressures, and improved forms bearing patent dates of 1876 and 1878 are still largely used.
Other interests diverted the trend of Mr. Sellers' inventive ability into other channels, and in his later years further experimental work was placed in the hands of Strickland L. Kneass, but he always retained his deep interest in the subject. In 1888, the self-acting form, devised and patented by Mr. Kneass, was intro- duced, specially adapted to the high boiler pressure carried on locomotive boilers, and met with immediate acceptance, being adopted by most of the railways of France as the standards, so that injectors bearing William Sellers' name supplanted Giffard's in the country of the inventor, besides being used in almost every country and colony of the globe. In fact, it may be added that his name is as closely asso- ciated with the highest development of the locomotive injector as it has been with the perfection of machine tools or the standard screw thread.
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Throughout an active business career in which constantly growing and mam- moth enterprises made heavy demands upon his time and energies, Mr. Sellers always found opportunity to cooperate in movements which he deemed of value to the city, the State or the country at large. He was for some years president of the Franklin Institute, and his services as such at a critical period in its history, in large measure, constituted the strongest element in the transformation of the Insti- tute and in its subsequent advancement. He was elected a member thereof in 1847 and so continued until his death, acting on its board of managers from 1857 until 1861 and again from 1864 until 1892, inclusive. After aiding to free the Institute from heavy financial obligations incurred by an unfortunate investment of funds in the early 'sixties, the Institute was reorganized in 1864, and Mr. Sellers was chosen president, serving until 1867, his administration being signalized by a notable increase in its activity.
The secretary of the Institute writes:
Perhaps the most prominent incident of his administration was the formulation by a spe- cial committee, of which he was chairman, of a uniform system of screw threads, which was presented in the form of a report read at the stated meeting of the Institute, held September 15, 1864. (See the "Journal," January, 1865.) This report, with its suggestions, was approved by the Institute, and within a comparatively few hours the system of screw threads proposed th' rein was officially adopted by the United States Government in its workshops, by the lead- b.s. railroad companies, prominent machine tool builders and others under the various names United States, Sellers' or Franklin Institute system. It is now in universal use throughout country.
The "Journal of the Institute" in this connection says:
Other attempts had been made to standardize threads for screws, but William Sellers was the first to devise a set of proportions and reduce them to formula so that the proper size, shapes and pitch for a given diameter of screw can be determined without comparison with a predetermined list. The angle and the truncated form of screw thread proposed by Mr. Sel- lers, which became the standard for the United States, were adopted by the International Congress for "L'Unification Des Filetages et des Gauges," held at Zurich, in October, 1901.
In reviewing the life and attainments of William Sellers, it is proper to allude to the numerous awards given at various international expositions to the house of which he was the senior and after incorporation the president, as well as to the honors conferred upon him as an individual in recognition of his genius as an inventor and constructor of machinery. At Vienna, in 1873, in addition to five bronze medals, there was awarded the grand medal of honor upon the following recommendation of the jury :
This diploma was awarded exclusively by the council of presidents as was, as therein stated :
Designed to bear the character of peculiar distinction for eminent merits in the domain of science and its application to the education of the people and advancement of the intellectual, moral and material welfare of man.
The following extract from the report of the judges appointed for the examina- tion of Group XXI (machine tools) at the Centennial Exhibition will suffice to indicate the nature of the award given to William Sellers & Company for their exhibits :
The undersigned, having examined the products herein described, respectfully recom- mend the same to the United States Centennial Commission for award for the following rea- sons, namely : For a remarkable collection of machine tools for working metal. This exhibit, when considered in regard to its extent and value, its extraordinary variety and general excel- lence, as also for the large amount of originality that is shown in the numerous devices that are introduced, is probably without a parallel in the past history of international exhibitions, and
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