John Sellers (147)
Election date: 1768 (Elected to the revived American Philosophical Society and the American Society in 1768.)John Sellers (19 September 1728–2 February 1804) was a farmer, surveyor, inventor, manufacturer, and public officeholder, and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Society, elected to both in 1768. Born in Darby, Pennsylvania, he displayed an early penchant for mechanical ingenuity, despite lacking a formal education. After assuming control of his family’s farm in 1752, he expanded its boundaries, conducted experiments to increase soil productivity, and invented machinery to make his work more efficient. He built a grist mill, saw mill, and linseed oil press on Cobbs Creek, making major improvements to existing wire screen and sieve designs. So effective were these inventions that he began manufacturing them for sale. Sellers was elected constable in 1761 before serving five terms in the Pennsylvania Assembly. Under the Assembly’s auspices, he conducted numerous surveys, assessing branches of the Schuylkill, Lehigh, and Susquehanna rivers and laying out roads from Philadelphia to Lancaster and from Middle Ferry to Strasburg. He likewise participated in an APS-funded survey for a proposed Delaware-Chesapeake canal, inventing a new kind of level in the process. He was also a member of the APS committee that observed the Transit of Venus, counting the clock at David Rittenhouse’s observatory. Sellers was an early supporter of American independence, serving on the Chester County Committee of Correspondence and in the Provincial Convention of 1774. After the war, he declined re-election to the Assembly because he rejected the state’s new unicameral legislature, but he went on to represent Delaware County in the state constitutional convention of 1789 and, a year later, served in the state senate. Sellers was elected to the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture in 1785, where he encouraged the construction of a bridge across the Schuylkill River using a model he had made. (PI)