11. Nathan Sellers 



and Wire Working 



Nathan, first son of John and Ann Sellers, was 

 born in 1751 on the ancestral Sellers estate in 

 Upper Darby, just west of the county of Phila- 

 delphia. On the Sellers property, cut east and 

 west by the West Chester Road and north and 

 south by Cobbs Creek, was Nathan's home until 

 he moved during the Revolutionary War to the 

 "Market Street Store" at 231 High Street. To 

 the Upper Darby estate he returned at the age 

 of 66, building at that time a new home, called 

 "Millbank." to serve him during his retirement. 



He was a Pennsylvania militiaman when, in 

 the summer of 1776, he marched off to war in New 

 Jersey with Col. John Paschall's Flying Camp. 

 Within a few weeks, however, he was returned to 

 his home by a resolution of Congress because of the 

 urgent need for his skill in wire work and the 

 construction of paper molds, and from that time 

 forward his life was devoted to the exacting art of 

 making molds and watermarks. 



He formed a partnership with his brother 

 David, six years his junior, and the business, 

 which encompassed numerous other enterprises 

 such as the making of woven wire sieves, textile 

 cards, and eventually riveted leather fire hose, 

 was carried on in the Market Street house and 

 store that George Escol came to know so well. 



The firm of N. & D. Sellers survived the 

 death of David, in 1813, 114 and Nathan was 



Figure 42. — Nathan Sellers (1 751-1830). 

 Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, 1808. 

 Photo courtesy of James Townsend Sellers 

 and Frick Art Reference Library. 



actively at work until 181 7, when, plagued by 

 strokes of vertigo, a "terrible nervous condition" — 

 attributed to his wire work 115 — and other infirmi- 

 ties, he retired to Millbank "to seek rest and quiet 

 to my Brain, in the country, and there to guard 

 by every means in my power, such as frequent 

 bleeding, temperance and avoiding ardent think- 

 ing, against the recurrence of such strokes." I16 



In spite of his ill health, Nathan lived until 

 1830, and during the last year of his life he main- 

 tained a detached but lively interest in the estab- 

 lishment of his son's and grandsons' Cardington 

 Shops, close by Millbank. 



in "My recollection of Uncle David," wrote George Escol, 

 "was very indistinct for I was only five years old when he died. 

 I recollect liking to sit on his lap before the open fire in the 

 back end of the store, but the most lasting impression was 

 seeing him in his coffin in the little parlour in the 6th St. house 

 and how cold his forehead felt when I was told to kiss it." 

 (Memoirs, book 1, p. 20.) 



115 Ibid., p. 27. 



116 Letter from Nathan Sellers to Nicholas Biddle dated 

 October 24, 1824, quoted in Dard Hunter, Papermaking in 

 Pioneer America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 

 1952), pp. 138-139. An appreciation of Nathan Sellers is 

 in Hunter's book, pp. 130-139. See also John W. Maxson, Jr,. 

 "Nathan Sellers, America's First Large Scale Maker of Paper 

 Moulds," The Paper Maker (i960), vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 1-16. 

 Mr. Maxson is writing a biographical work on the Sellers 

 family. 



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