4. An Adventure in Learning 



George Escol Sellers was born into a Quaker 

 household in which his father's work, and indeed 

 his workshop, was part of the daily family expe- 

 rience. The house in which he was born was in 

 Mulberry Court, 42 which opened onto the west 

 side of Sixth Street above Market, and just 

 around the corner from his grandfather Nathan's 



store, shop, and dwelling, the second door east 

 of Sixth on Market. When Nathan Sellers in 

 r 8 1 7 or 1818 built the home that he called '•Mill- 

 bank" on the Sellers tract in Upper Darby Town- 

 ship, Delaware County, the author's family moved 

 into the place he vacated. This is the "Market 

 Street house" referred to below. 



As to my early shop practice, it had a very early 

 start but no regular apprenticeship on any one branch. 

 It did not begin exactly at my birth but so soon after 

 that I cannot fix the date nearer than that it was 

 immediately after our removal into what we called 

 the second house in Mulberry Court. It was a cu- 

 rious old fashioned wainscoted house, the cellar having 

 a series of br>ck arches and a foundation adequate 

 for a fortress. Open fireplaces were in every room 

 with tile facings and high wooden mantels and all 

 these fireplaces opened into separate flues of great 

 size that united formed a stack that passed through 

 the centre of the garret room and out of a gambrel 

 roof. The garret had dormer windows opening on the 

 Court, as well as the rear. and a single gable window 

 to the west which was directly opposite the stack of 

 flues, the space between which and the windows was 

 much less than the space on the east side owing to the 

 house entries being on that side. The size of this 

 stack of flues might have had something to do with 

 the boys' first outfit in way of a work shop, for the 

 carpenter's bench father made for us stood against 

 the south side of the flues and in length was exactly 

 the width of the great stack. His own carpenter 

 bench was on the north side of the same stack, its stop 

 and screw vise end extending some two or more feet be- 



,2 The author describes, in the present chapter, the "second 

 house" in Mulberry Court. Elsewhere, however (in chapter 

 9), he establishes his birthplace as Mulberry Court. 



yond the stack to the east. This put his daylight work 

 in a bad light but father said boys must have the best 

 light, for their work was in the day time and his 

 mostly by candle light, and he wanted the best day- 

 light for his turning lathe which stood by the west 

 gable window. 



This lathe was rather a primitive affair; its pulley 

 head was made of wrought iron; wooden shears; tail 

 head, a wooden block; crank wheel, wooden, and a 

 long treadle ran lengthwise of the shears with another 

 at right angles which ran nearly across the garret 

 floor. Primitive affair as this lathe was, father used 

 to do some very beautiful work in hard wood and 

 ivory on it and on it he gave Charles and me our 

 first lessons. This was at a time when no good 

 carpenter tools of a size to suit boys were to be bought 

 and father himself made most of ours, or helped us 

 make them for ourselves. It was while with father 

 we occupied this joint garret shop and that he got 

 possession of the fine set of carpenter tools that had 

 belonged to David Jones. I never can forget the 

 glee of us boys when helping carry the tools up to 

 the garret shop and to see the then empty tool chest 

 hoisted up outside and taken in through the gable 

 window. It was the advent of these tools that gave 

 us our first lessons in the importance of system and 

 order. With care and under father's watchfulness 

 we were allowed to use some of these tools. It was 

 an adage with father, "That an indifferent workman 



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