English: Title: Bulletin - United States National Museum

Identifier: bulletinunitedst2381965unit Year: 1877 (1870s) Authors: United States National Museum; Smithsonian Institution; United States. Dept. of the Interior Subjects: Science Publisher: Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, [etc. ]; for sale by the Supt. of Docs. , U. S. Govt Print. Off. Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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Text Appearing Before Image: Figure 2.—Sophonisba Angusciola Peale Sellers (1786—1859). mother of George Escol Sellers. Portrait by her father, Charles VVillson Peale, 181 1. The child is George Escol Sellers's younger sister. Elizabeth Coleman Sellers, who was born in 1810. Photo courtesy of Charles Coleman Sellers and Frick Art Reference Library.

Text Appearing After Image: learned. He was accurately characterized by Jacob Perkins as "the boy who asked questions and would have an explanation of everything."1 His formal schooling started with his attendance at the "ABC" school of Mrs. Saul, who held forth in a seeond-story room on Chestnut Street at Seventh, about two blocks from his home. He recalled this "giantess with a terrific turban on her head" as having "not a particle of kindness within her skin and her greatest delight seemed to be in torturing the kids entrusted to her care."2 Until he was 15 or 16 years old, he had various schoolmasters, remembering with particular gratitude and affection his term with Joseph Roberts, who taught in the Friends' School on Fifth Street and whose fourth-day afternoon lectures were open to all whom his students cared to invite. In Roberts's classroom, George Escol sat at the same table with Solomon and William Milnor Roberts, both to become civil engineers associated with the Penn- sylvania Portage Railway, and with John Dahlgren, of naval ordnance fame. It was in the fourth-day lectures that Sellers met John C. Trautwine, whose civil engineering handbook was one of the earliest and most durable works of its kind.3 Sellers attended a private class in mechanical drawing held by William Mason, machinist and instru- ment maker; and he drew with John Haviland, architect.4 His practical training 1 Peale-Sellers Papers, George E. Sellers memoirs (MSS, American Philosophical Society Library), book 4, pp. 13-14. Hereinafter referred to as Memoirs. 2 Memoirs, book 4, p. 24. 3 Memoirs, book 4, pp. 27-30. 1 Memoirs, book 8, p. q.

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