Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Coleman SELLERS
He was a Quaker but was temporarily put out of the meeting for his engineer and inventor, he worked on "Old Ironsides" during the War of 1812. An engineer and inventor, he worked on the Transatlantic Cable and a Niagara Falls project; he was also involved in developing machines to manufacture paper.
Notes from Sellers:
Coleman Sellers had lived a very active life, being absorbed in the details of his business, and in the prosecution of his numerous inventions. Unlike his father and grandfather, public service had no attraction for him. The only post of this sort that he ever consented to hold was that of Commissioner for the building of Eastern Penitentiary, by appointment in 1921 of the State Legislature. His death occurred in Philadelphia on May 07, 1834 in his home at No. 10 North 6th Street.
The inventive genius of these three men, the elder Coleman and his two sons Charles and George Escol Sellers, inherited from their long line of mechanical ancestors, manifested itself in their branching out into many diverse fields of activity, and by their devising methods and machines of a marked and
progressive nature. Outside of their older lines of paper making and wool carding machines, they were leaders in the manufacturing of fire engines, operated by man power with the use of long handled pump levers, and in improved machinery and equipment for iron furnaces, iron rolling mills and for flour mills.
Among these innovations, and which had a striking bearing on the activities of the two sons after death of their father in the month of May, 1834, was a huge lathe which had been constructed by them for the making of the heavy iron drums used in the manufacture of paper. It had a capacity of sufficient size to produce drums 9 feet long with a diameter of 4 feet and 10 inches. At that time this was considered a mammoth machine. They also constructed for their use the first iron planing machine in the state, and which had a capacity of 8 feet in length and 4 feet and 3 inches in width.
As a result of the reputation they had acquired for their heavy equipment and their ingenuity and skill in devising improvements, the Commissioners of the first railroad in the State, the Columbia Railroad Company, called upon them in the latter part of the summer of 1834 to see if they would construct locomotives for this state owned railway. This they agreed to do, although with considerable
misgivings on the part of the Commissioners, for here were two young men, Charles of only 23 and Escol of 21 years, who would agree to undertake the work only on the condition that they should be permitted to introduce several seemingly revolutionary innovations. But after long negotiations the
Commissioners and their mechanical advisers were partly convinced and the young men were authorized to proceed. thus was produced the first locomotive on what was later to become the standard type for the country. The young men, however, were not permitted to incorporate all these improvements in their first locomotive. They did succeed in introducing all of them into their subsequently manufactured engines. These revolutionary innovations seem simple and customary now, but then were questionable novelties upon which the engineers of the day looked askance, such as substituting an iron frame for the old wooden, cylinders at the front end and on the outside of the smoke chest with connecting rods running back, also on the outside, to two driving wheels, one in front and one behind the fire box, counterweights on the drivers, a center pin in front by which the weight was carried on a moveable truck, iron wheels throughout, and finally a separate four wheel tender with a center bar.
Charles Sellers was so nettled by this questioning of his skill that he devised and built as a gift to the government a milling machine for putting the milled edge on the coins struck off by the mint. In those days a mechanic made his own tools and in this he took great pride. Charles Sellers regularly made the commoner sort, such as hammers, chisels, smooth and ornate moulding planes, files and the liking, but he was wont to devise and make the most complicated instruments, such as calipers for the pocket with ink and pencil drawing attachments, and the like. He also delighted in trick accomplishments, such as filing with a flat file a concave surface along the Straight side of an iron bar,
so that the light might show under the edge of the file when laid across the groove.
This pride in skill and without the hard and selfish business sense of their father, led to their ultimate financial downfall, and they had to abandon their shop.
While still carrying on their vacation in Philadelphia, and during the latter part of the decade of the 1830's, they got hold of and perfected a process of making lead pipes by drawing out the molten metal from a receptacle through a tube with a plug in the center, and thus making a solid and substantial pipe
by one continuous mechanical operation. Previously the method had been by manual labor to roll a sheet of cold lead over and onto itself, leaving a central opening, and sealing the edges with solder.
In order to secure and adequate supply of the metal, Charles Sellers and his brother, George Escol, during 1839, made an adventurous trip of investigation to Galena, Illinois, then the center of lead mining in America. They reached Chicago by means of a train to a port Lake Erie and thence by steamer through the Great Lakes. In Chicago they procured horses and rode horseback to Galena across the almost unsettled wilderness of Northern Illinois. On their return they went by the way of the Mississippi to St. Louis and up the Ohio to Cincinnati. The whole trip was rough and full of adventure, including a storm on the lakes which came dangerously near to wrecking their vessel.
They found satisfactory supply of lead at Galena, but no propitious locality for manufacturing. In Chicago they saw as only a great muddy swamp, and St. Louis as a fur traders post for a hoard of rough trappers. Cincinnati was promising and with their families they ultimately moved there in 1841.
Both men, however, abandoned their plan for manufacturing lead pipes and formed instead a connection with the Globe Rolling Mills, of Which Charles became the manager.
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