SCHLEY COUNTY, GA - Sellar - Joiner Families

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This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: Richard White <rw@pone.com> 


SELLER - JOINER
Jacob Benjamin Sellers' wife Georgia Ann
Joiner was born in Camilla, Indian lands (I
have seen birth years for her varying from
1811 to 1819).  Her parents Bennett Joiner
and Charity Sherrod ended up in Sumter
County.  

Jacob Benjamin (who was born in North
Carolina) and Georgia Ann married in Pulaski
County in 1838 and their son Richard M. (my
great grandfather after who I am named)
enrolled in Company B of the 11th Georgia
Infantry Regiment in Hawkinsville, Pulaski
County, in 1862.  In 1847 I found Jacob &
Georgia joining by letter and being
dismissed by letter from the Ebenezer
Baptist Church at Ellaville which was then
in Sumter County, but has been in Schley
County since 1857.   I have not yet found
the family in the 1840 census.  In 1850 they
are in the census in Dooly County.  In 1860
they were in the census in Terrell County.
In 1860 their oldest son George W. Sellers
was living in Camilla, Mitchell County, with
the Alfred Joiner family.  I'm not sure what
the kinship was with Alfred.  I am pretty
sure that he was not a brother of Georgia
Ann, so I suspect that he was probably an
uncle or cousin.


Interestingly, there were also men named
Jacob Sellers living in both Calhoun County
and Schley County in 1860, and from both
their names and where they were located I
suspect that they were related to Jacob
Benjamin Sellers... but he was clearly the
one who was living in Terrell County that
year.


Here's where this begins to get complex...
My great grandfather (Richard M. Sellars)
was born either in 1846 or 1847 with only
his Confederate disability discharge saying
1847, and that discharge has another tidbit,
his place of birth (given as Hiawassee,
Towns County), which I believe to be wrong
as well.  I suspect that my great
grandfather Richard M. Sellars was named
after another Richard Sellars who was born
in North Carolina in 1788 and moved to
Georgia in 1830 (this information is on his
gravestone in Schley County)... particularly
since it is known that Jacob & Georgia were
in the Schley County area in 1847... more or
less in the time frame that their son
Richard M. was born.  All of the oral
information that I have encountered says
that Jacob B. Sellers' father was named
William, so I suspect that Richard was
either a very much older brother of Jacob B.
(who was born in 1805), or, it would seem
more likely, an uncle or cousin.


Jacob B. Sellers was enrolled in Company E
of the 51st Georgia Infantry Regiment which
was raised in Baker & Calhoun counties, on
March 4 1862.  That is the only clear record
of his Confederate service, but there was a
record of a Jacob A. Sellers of the 51st
Georgia in the Post Register for Albany
Georgia for 20 May (no year given) and I
believe that is actually a record of his
hospitalization in 1862... the "A." just
being a mis-reading of a hand-written "B."
Typically there was a high mortality rate
among soldiers of new Confederate units,
from contagious disease... and based on oral
history I believe that Jacob B. died within
a matter of a couple of weeks after he
"joined" the Confederate Army.  Oral history
says that his father "died in the war" and
that Richard M. "ran away from home" and
joined the Confederate Army... with an
implied causal relationship between the two
events.  There is no record of Richard M.'s
actual date of enrollment in Company B of
the 11th Georgia Infantry Regiment... but he
appeared in the unit in Virginia in a record
dated 7 to 22 May 1862, so I believe that he
was enrolled in late April or early May.  It
would have taken a bit of time to get from
Pulaski County to Virginia... possibly from
7 to 22 May, because the record covering
that time period was for "commutation of
rations"... typically a reimbursement for
meals eaten by a soldier purchased from his
own pocket in transit.


George W. enrolled in the same company of
the 51st Infantry Regiment on the same day
as his father.  He was wounded at
Funksville, MD, on 10 Jul 1863 during Lee's
retreat after the Battle of Gettysburg, and
he died in a Confederate hospital at
Kingston, Bartow County, GA, on 13 December
1863.  His back pay was requested by Susan
O. Sellars, who stated that at the time of
her petition that she was somebody's sister-
in-law (I can't read whose), and that both
of his (and Richard M.'s) parents were dead.
The petition was headed as having been made
in Calhoun County, and I very much suspect
that Richard M. Sellars was actually born in
the Towns District of Calhoun County...
because though the family moved a lot from
county to county I do not find them anywhere
out of the upper part of S.W. Georgia..
Unfortunately the petition document is in
terrible condition and so far out of four
pages I've been able to make sense... I
think... out of only a few lines of it.  The
same lawyer who prepared this petition,
William A. Walton, Attorney, in October 1863
and February 1864 also prepared petitions
for a similar purpose for the pay of a
Sergeant John M. Sellars of Company F of the
47th Georgia Infantry Regiment (originally
Company F of the 11th Georgia Infantry
Battalion) in which he enrolled in Appling
County, also on 4 March 1862.  Sgt. Sellers
died at the University Hospital, Cassville,
GA, in on 18 October 1863.  The petitions
concerning Sgt. John M. Sellars are not in
his file.  The bulk of the records
comprising the Compiled Confederate Service
records are extracts from muster rolls and
other types of rolls... and the information
was extracted from those rolls in about the
1890s, by clerks employed by the U.S. War
Department, at the request of the former
Confederate states and for the purpose of
verifying Confederate pension claims made by
veterans and widows of veterans, to the
governments of the former Confederate
states.  However, some records published in
the "Official Records of the War of the
Rebellion" are just cited by location, and
any actual, original Confederate records
that were found that applied to only one
person, or sometimes to two or three
persons, were added to these extracted
records.  If they pertained to more than one
person, they were put in one person's "file"
and cross reference cards were created and
put in the files of the other affected
persons.  There is a cross reference card in
Sgt. John M. Sellars' record, to the file of
a Corporal E. Phineas Bryan of the 47th
Georgia. The handwriting of the cross
reference card is so crabbed, though, that I
can't understand it.  But... either there or
elsewhere I have hopes of going back to the
Compiled Confederate Service records and
perhaps finding those petitions related to
John M. Sellars.  In the meantime I don't
know what they say... but I suspect that
Susan O. Sellers may have been involved in
all of them and that information in the
petitions may explain the relationships of
the various Sellers/Sellars involved...


There was also an Eli (Elijah?) Sellers who
was enrolled in Company D of the  47th
Georgia Infantry Regiment...  The only
record of him is that he was "absent sick"
in August of 1862.  I do not think that this
was the same Elijah who married Susan
because they lived in Mitchell County and
Company D of the 47th Georgia Infantry
Regiment was raised in Screven County...
plus my best guess (but it's only an
"educated guess") is that this Eli probably
died in the hospital in 1862.  I also note
that not in the service records, but in the
pension records... a John H. Sellers of
Appling County applied for a pension but his
claim was denied for lack of proof.  He
would have been probably 15 or 16 years old
at the time, and claimed to have joined
Company B of the 11th Georgia Infantry
Regiment... the same unit that my great
grandfather Richard M. Sellars had served
in... but the testimony in his application
spoke of surrendering in Athens, Georgia...
and the 11th Georgia Infantry Regiment was
in Virginia.  My guess is that this young
John H. Sellars probably did enlist in the
11th Georgia, but that was at the very tail
end of the war and Georgia was in a mess
with Sherman and all... so he was probably
just farmed out as a "recruit" to some other
unit... and as a young kid at the time was
unable to recall and explain as an old man
what he did but had little understanding of
as, virtually, a child. Interestingly but
probably entirely coincidental and
irrelevant, his witness statements came from
Habersham County (see James Lunsford
Sellers, below).


I cannot connect the dots in all of this,
but it seems to me that there are indeed
dots, and that they are indistinctly
indicative of family relationships of some
form or another...


George W. died.  Richard M. ran away from
home & never returned.  That left a brother
between them in age, James Lunsford Sellers,
who I find no record of after 1860 unless it
is one in Habersham County in 1870 (and that
seems an unlikely location)... Charles M.
who was about 4 years younger than Richard
M. (who I find no record of at all after
1860), plus sisters Sabra Ann, Martha A.,
Josephine, Elizabeth Bethany and (I think
but am not sure because she was not born
until August of 1861 and was on no census
record I have been able to find yet, as a
child) Georgia Ann... all minor orphans
except maybe James Lunsford.


Martha A. ("Mattie" or "Matt") and Elizabeth
Bethany married brothers, Virgil Asa Veal,
Sr. and Millard Fillmore Veal, in DeKalb
County.  I have no idea how the got there or
who they stayed with while they grew up to
marriageable age.  Millard Fillmore Veal and
Elizabeth Bethany Sellars moved to Indian
Territory before 1900, as did many of the
children of Virgil Asa Veal and Martha A.
("Mattie" or "Matt") Sellers, though their
parents stayed in Georgia.  Matt Veal and
her daughter Lizzie stayed with my great
grandfather Richard M. Sellars near Cairo in
Thomas (now Grady) County, GA, where they
both appeared in a family photo taken in
1916.


Apparently Richard M. was reunited at least
with Elizabeth and Martha A. by a man I had
always thought (from my interpretation of
oral history) was named Alford Sellars.
However, it now appears to me that this was
probably Alfred Joiner who Richard M.'s
brother George W. was living with in 1860.
Alfred Joiner was still living in Camilla,
Mitchell County, in the 1870 census... and I
don't know where he was in between, but in
1900 he was living in the Blowing Cave
District of Decatur County.  Although that
was Decatur County and Richard M. Sellars
was living in Thomas County... in 1905 when
Grady County was created... both places
ended up in Grady County.  According to oral
history, "Alford" was a traveling stove
repairman, and in his travels he found
Richard M. at his home near Cairo.


Sabra Sellers (age 17) was also gone from
Jacob B. and Georgia Ann's home and showed
up living in the household of (first name
unreadable... maybe Kermit) Linsey (age 38)
in Dooly County in 1860, along with a 74
year old midwife named Sabra Joiner.  I
suspect that she was living with a namesake
relative in the Joiner family, who was
probably kin to the head of household's
wife, Martha Linsey... perhaps her mother.
Sabra A. Sellers who bought federal land in
Montgomery County, Alabama, in 1892, might
be her as well...


Josephine Sellers was exactly the right age
at the time to be a single mother who shows
up with 4 children ages 10 to 16 in Decatur
County in the 1870 census.  She and her
older daughter were listed as seamstresses
and her older son was listed as a harness
maker, but whether she never married or was
divorced at this point I haven't a clue.
It is also possible that this is some other
Josephine who had married a Sellers. All I
have to go on at this point is the name, and
it is possible that is just a coincidence..


Georgia Ann Sellars married a John Pollock
in Mitchell County.  I found him or his
father in various censuses in Houston County
and Pulaski County as well as in Decatur
County.  I would like very much to be able
to learn if I have correctly reasoned that
Jacob Benjamin Sellers and Georgia Ann
Joiner were her parents.  My great
grandfather also had a daughter named
Georgia Ann Sellars, but she wasn't born
till 1878 so this clearly isn't her.


Richard White
Tallahassee, FL