Figure 2. — Sophonisba Angusciola Peale 

 Sellers (1 786—1859). mother of George Escol 

 Sellers. Portrait by her father, Charles VVillson 

 Peale, 1 8 1 1 . The child is George Escol Sellers's 

 younger sister. Elizabeth Coleman Sellers, who 

 was born in 1810. Photo courtesy of Charles 

 Coleman Sellers and Frick Art Reference 

 Library. 



learned. He was accurately characterized by Jacob Perkins as "the boy who asked 

 questions and would have an explanation of everything." 1 



His formal schooling started with his attendance at the "ABC" school of Mrs. 

 Saul, who held forth in a seeond-story room on Chestnut Street at Seventh, about two 

 blocks from his home. He recalled this "giantess with a terrific turban on her head" 

 as having "not a particle of kindness within her skin and her greatest delight seemed 

 to be in torturing the kids entrusted to her care." 2 Until he was 15 or 16 years old, 

 he had various schoolmasters, remembering with particular gratitude and affection 

 his term with Joseph Roberts, who taught in the Friends' School on Fifth Street and 

 whose fourth-day afternoon lectures were open to all whom his students cared to 

 invite. In Roberts's classroom, George Escol sat at the same table with Solomon and 

 William Milnor Roberts, both to become civil engineers associated with the Penn- 

 sylvania Portage Railway, and with John Dahlgren, of naval ordnance fame. It was 

 in the fourth-day lectures that Sellers met John C. Trautwine, whose civil engineering 

 handbook was one of the earliest and most durable works of its kind. 3 Sellers attended 

 a private class in mechanical drawing held by William Mason, machinist and instru- 

 ment maker; and he drew with John Haviland, architect. 4 His practical training 



1 Peale-Sellers Papers, George E. Sellers memoirs (MSS, American Philosophical Society Library), 

 book 4, pp. 13-14. Hereinafter referred to as Memoirs. 



2 Memoirs, book 4, p. 24. 



3 Memoirs, book 4, pp. 27-30. 

 1 Memoirs, book 8, p. q. 



