Richard M. Sellars

Richard M. Sellars

Richard M. Sellars (1916)

Richard M. Sellars was Richard White's great grandfather.

Richard M.¹ Sellars was my father's mother's father. I was named after him.

Richard M. Sellars' discharge from Confederate military service indicates that he was born in Hiawassee, Towns County², Georgia (near the Georgia border with North Carolina and Tennessee).

As he often was in later life, he was called "R. M. Sellars" in a "Militia Enrollment List as Required by the Act of December 14th, 1863", for the 975th Georgia Military District of Lee County, Georgia. Since this list was basically the roll of Lee County's "Home Guard", those too young, too old, or too infirm to be on active military service; and since his gravestone identifies his birth date as 17 October 1846 making him barely 17 years of age at that time, it might be presumed that he was too young to serve. But the Confederate draft age was 16, and actually he was a disabled, discharged veteran. He had served with the army of General Thomas Jonathan ("Stonewall") Jackson during at least the latter part of the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 and afterward when Jackson joined Lee in the Seven Days Battles.

When his service began is not known because no record of R. M. Sellars' enlistment is contained in the Compiled Confederate Service Records. He first appears in those records as a private in the Confederate Army, on a receipt roll of Company B of the 11th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, for "Commutation of Rations" during the period of 7 to 24 May 1862. This may have been reimbursement for meals purchased while traveling from Georgia where he enlisted, to Virginia where the 11th Georgia Infantry Regiment was already. He was admitted to Chimborazo Hospital No. 3 in Richmond, Virginia, on 2 July 1862, with typhoid fever. He was released from the hospital and discharged for disability from the Confederate Army on 19 August 1862. His discharge certificate states that he was enrolled at Hawkinsville, Georgia, but gives no date. It also states that he was 14 years old at the time of discharge. This age does not entirely comport with the birth date shown on his gravestone, which would have made him 15 years old when he was discharged. The surgeon who signed the discharge certificate stated that he was too debilitated by the typhoid for further military service.

Family oral history indicates that R. M. Sellars ran away from home and enlisted in the Confederate Army and that his father died in the War, with an implied connection between those two events. I have not as yet been able to either confirm or contradict that story through research. I have recently confirmed identification of R. M. Sellars' father as Jacob Sellars and his mother as Georgia Ann Joiner. I have found that Jacob and Georgia Ann were married in Pulaski County (of which Hawkinsville is the county seat) on 11 September 1838, and I continue to seek information concerning his father's fate.

Oral history indicates that he did not return home during the War or after, and that his brother Alford Sellars who was working as a traveling stove repairman found him some years later where he had settled near Cairo, in Thomas (later Grady) County, Georgia. He married Mary Ann Haven, of Lee, Florida, youngest daughter of John Shepard Haven and Martha Ann ("Patsy") Welch. She died in 1892, and R. M. Sellars remarried. The second marriage was a disaster. The second wife, a widow woman, reputedly gave preferential treatment to her children and discriminated against his. He divorced her, and got in trouble with the law as a consequence of a subsequent dispute with her.

Although R. M. Sellars never learned to read, he was an astute businessman and moderately well to do for the times and locality. He bought a part interest in a grist mill and used money from that and other business ventures to buy farmland. He ended up with over a thousand acres. Some 18 "sharecropper" tenant farmers cultivated it in partnership with him, and lived on the land.

I have oral history to the effect that he was a deacon and the treasurer of Long Branch Baptist Church, north of Cairo in what is now Grady County, Georgia, and that as a result of the dispute with his ex-wife, he was asked to resign from the deaconry... but he was also asked to remain on as treasurer and did. If that was the case, it was apparently but a temporary situation. Long Branch Baptist Church records do not name deacons, but do show acceptance into membership and expulsions from the church. The breakup of the unhappy couple is reflected in church records as follows:

Dec. 1912 Fellow acknowledgments: When brother R.M. Sellars reported that him and his wife was separated and asked that the case be brought before the church and that he be justified. After an explanation by Brother Sellers the church declared non fellowship against sister Sellers and on charges was brought against sister Sellers namely for absenting herself from her husband without a scriptural cause and on motion was expelled from the church for said charge.

However, those records also reflect the following final entry in a chapter of R.M. Sellars' life during which he had represented the church as a delegate at many Association and Union meetings in South Georgia and North Florida over the years since he had become a member "by experience" in 1893.

July 13, 1918 When the doors of the church were opened for members and Mrs. M.L. Sellers presented herself for restoration and a committee consisting of W.M. Prince, D.L. Barber, J.J. Brown, J.B. Brown, J.W. Rich, J. I. Merritt, J. L. Layton and G.B. Willis to try to bring about a reconciliation between Brother and sister Sellars and Thursday the Committee brought in their report stating that they could not accomplish any good results and the report was received and the application rejected and committee relieved, then the chairman of the committee, Brother Rich, brought charges against Brother Sellars for contempt of the church and under said charges the church withdrew fellowship from Brother Sellars.

R. M. Sellars died on 15 January 1926. He and his first wife, Mary Ann Haven, are buried together at Long Branch Baptist Church cemetery. Although their grave stone is above average in size, in a final testimony to ways of uncommon thrift, they are buried head to head, a single stone bearing inscriptions to each on opposite sides... which is an arrangement that I do not recall having seen elsewhere.

My father recently mentioned that the most characteristic thing he remembered of his grandfather Sellars was a habit, when not being obeyed immediately, of making a little whooshing noise through his lips and teeth, followed by the words "Like I say..." and a reiteration of whatever it was he had said.

The photograph of R.M. Sellars at the top of the page was taken at a family reunion at his home on 20 February 1916. The photograph of the original Long Branch Baptist Church building (demolished in 1963) was copied from a commemorative dinner plate. I helped carry the coffin of my grandfather White down the steps seen on the right (west) side of the church and into a waiting hearse when I was 12 years old. I was supposed to be an honorary pallbearer, but some of the old men who served as pallbearers did not seem to grasp that concept. The photo below was first e-mailed to me in October of 2001 by Suzianne Braddy Pruett. It is of Richard M. Sellars and Missouri Lester West Harper Sellars, and was probably taken while they were married (between 1898 and 1912). The identity of Missouri was confirmed for me on 14 February 2003 by Mrs. Josie Miller, who said that she remembered Missouri very well and that Missouri had bought her first pair of leather shoes.

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^1. I have not found his middle name in writing anywhere and even if I did I'm not sure that would conclusively indicate how it should be spelled. His grandson Freeman Maze Sellars was apparently named after him, but in her "Story of My Life" my grandmother Martha Bama Sellars stated that her father (R. M. Sellars) could not spell his own name.

^2.Towns county did not exist when R. M. Sellars was born. It was created from parts of Union and Rabun Counties in 1856.

I thank Mrs. Latrelle Gilliard for typescript excerpts from the Long Branch Baptist Church records. Long Branch Baptist Church was in Thomas County prior to the creation of Grady County from parts of Thomas and Decatur counties, effective 1 January 1906, as was R. M. Sellars' home, several miles to the east.