Isaiah Sellers 1803 - 1864

Michael,

Captain Sellers is buried here in St. Louis at Bellefontaine Cemetery, along with other notables such as August A. Busch. A few of us went looking for the site one afternoon, but the cemetery is so large, and without a guide or map, daylight ran out. Now, if I wasn't living in the modern day of "trespassing" after dusk, I would have set out on a Tom & Huck adventure and continued the search until we'd found it! I will give it another try one of these days...in the daylight, and not with the threat of an overnight stay in jail!

Michael and Kevin

in the Bellefontaine cemetery, capt Sellers monument is described in Gould page 599 as a very beautiful marble monument with a full life-size figure of the Captain standing at the wheel of a steamboat. which had been prepared by himself some years before his death. I would start looking in areas where you can see the river.

He was born abt 1802 in North Carolina and died 6 Mar 1864. Starting 2 to 5 days after his death in Memphis start checking the local St Louis papers for his of obituary and his funeral.

Carl Jones

Michael Marleau! There you are! We, I, have missed your most valuable contributions to this site! Very much looking forward to the Sellers material. Welcome back.

Sharon Cunningham

Here are several images of the monument for Capt. Isaiah Sellers in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis. As Kevin mentioned, there are many famous people buried there. Many of those notables have river connections, including Capt. Horace Bixby, James Buchanan Eads, various other steamboat captains, pilots, owners, etc. Just "aft" of the Sellers monument is the grave of Capt. Donald T. Wright, longtime publisher of The Waterways Journal, and his wife, Pearl. Capt. Wright purchased the grave lot just a few short weeks prior to his sudden passing on Thanksgiving Day of 1965. Over the years the Sellers monument has lost some spokes from the pilotwheel, but is still in fairly good condition, all things considered.

In the fall of 1976, river historian/curator Miss Ruth Ferris took me on a tour of Bellefontaine Cemetery. Ruth had a well marked map of where the "river people" are resting and we visited ALL of them! I remember Ruth saying that the disappointing aspect of our visit was that none of them could tell us anything! It was a beautiful autumn morning and we even packed a picnic lunch. We stopped in the cemetery office (if you visit be sure to obtain a map there which lists all the famous monuments) and Ruth told the desk attendant that she had recently discovered a discrepancy in the date of a steamboat captain's death. The clerk looked dubious and summoned the cemetery director, who was one of Ruth's former fifth grade students at the Community School. When he saw who it was he said, "If Miss Ferris says it's wrong then it's WRONG! Change it in the cemetery record book!"

Do you figure that notable statuary is (or was) a likeness of Cap'n Sellers? Is Miss Ferris resting amongst those other river notables, or is she buried elsewhere? Though I've been passing close to where John and Marie Hartford are reposing in Nashville, I've yet to make a detour and visit their graves. I must do that soon.

Hi, Shipyard & steamboating colleagues:
Interesting thread on Isaiah Sellers with 'follows' as posted. *Good seeing Michael Marleau back in our midst leading this discussion. Michael has an incredible collection of his own way out there in California in addition to being interested in the earlier years of steamboating. Shipyard, Keith would be the one to tell us where the final resting place of Ms. Ruth Ferris is in St. Louis. I don't know about the likeness of the statue to Sellers, but once somebody looked at a statue of Julius Caesar asking if it 'really' looked like him. The answer was, "In such things you have to use your imagination."

Fred Way and other have said much about Isaiah Sellers. Sellers, among other things, was pilot on the early Str. J.M. WHITE of 1844 [*Way's DIRECTORY Entry No. 2866 Pg. 233]. Isaiah Sellers and pilot partner Nathan Way brought the WHITE when new up from New Orleans to St. Louis 24 hours & five minutes on a special 'speed trial.' The WHITE of that day would have been sleek, lean, mean and ready for action similar to the famed BUCKEYE STATE of 1850. The late Bill Reed did a painting of the BUCKEYE STATE as has John Fryant. John's version gives a view of what these early steamboats of that era looked like and it remains my all-time favorite.

Sellers was on the Str. MARIA Nov., 21, 1846 [Way. Entry No. 3742 Pg. 307] when lost in a collission with the Str. SULTANA with a loss of life between 30 to 50 due to confusion in passing signals. Whistles were not common on steamboats at that time with pilots relying on the sounding of bells. Capt. Sellers, according to Fred Way, perfected a system of uniform rules for tapping roof bells in advance for understanding of maneuvers. I'd like to hear [No pun intended] more on this old 'bell system' and if it was later adapted to the use of steam whistles. Who knows? Alan Bates or Bill Judd etc?

Cheers,
R. Dale Flick

Don't ask me or Bill Judd about the history of passing and meeting systems of the past. The guy to ask is Captain Charlie Lehman. He has studied running lights and signals far more deeply than I think Bill Judd or know I have done. Captain Lehman's Lexicon is in the throes of becoming published. This book will be a must for every practicing riverman, historian, proctor in admiraltry, writer or fan.

Some of us thought that maybe you and Cap'n Bill had recollections of those days.

Hey SAM, Been there and done that, but can't remember when or why !!

Sam: Ruth is interred in Oakland Cemetery at Moberly, Missouri. She was born there in 1897, shortly before the Ferris family moved to St. Louis, where Ruth's father was an attorney. Ruth had four other siblings, two brothers and two sisters. Only one brother, Forrest G. Ferris, Jr., is interred in St. Louis.