upon the flaking of stone for arrowheads and other instruments were summarized 

 in a publication of the Smithsonian Institution. 8 



Upon his retirement from business, George Escol Sellers, his sister Anna, and his 

 adopted daughter Lui took a house on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. There 

 he wrote the series for American Machinist; kept up a correspondence with brothers, 

 nephews, and cousins in order to straighten out obscure points and to reinforce 

 his own memory; and wrote hundreds of unpublished pages of reminiscences con- 

 cerning the very numerous Sellers and Peale clans. 



Fascinated by his own memory, George Escol frequently speculated upon the 

 mechanics of a brain's ability to store seemingly unlimited quantities of information. 

 His prodigious memory was a source of wonder even within his own family. To one 

 of his relatives he wrote : 9 



I remember many little things when I was not over 2 years old. Once at 

 Millbank Aunt Nancy was questioning me and telling me of little things when 

 Mother asked, "What is the earliest thing you do remember?" 



"I can't go back of the great snowstorm of Nov. 26th, 1808." 



Mother sat a moment thinking when she exclaimed, "Why Escol that was 

 your birthday." 



"Yes Mother I did not think it safe to go back of that." 



Sister Anna, writing in 1893 to one of the Peales, called attention to brother 

 Escol's article on the early U.S. Mint. "It reads like a story," she wrote. "My 

 brother is an old man to write such long articles," she continued, "but he does it to 

 bring in some money — this time to pay for painting his house outside — or to help 

 towards it ... . Escol is in his 85 year he does much carpenter work, and garden- 

 ing yet is very lame in both knees — and gets very tired." 10 



There was more to Escol's writing than the money it brought in. It was his 

 way of communing with the past and with posterity, leaving narratives and notes, 

 in ink and in pencil, "from which some facts may be picked out after I have joined 

 the majority."" In 1898 he was keeping a diary, noting daily occurrences, visitors, 

 weather, and the like. He missed not a day throughout the fall, and half way- 

 through December. Each allotted space was filled with his easy scrawl up to his 

 entry for Sunday, December 18. He died two weeks later, on January 1, 1899. 



8 "Observations on Stone-Chipping," Annual Report of the Board oj Regents oj the Smithsonian III' 

 stitution . . . 1885 (Washington, 1886), pt. 1, pp. 871-891. 



9 Memoirs, undated letter at end of book 2. 



10 Anna Sellers to Albert C. Peale, May 10, 1893 (MSS, Mills collection, American Philosophical 

 Society Library). 



11 Memoirs, book 5, p. 22. 



XV1I1 



