REESE SELLERS.

Pg 58

          Although he is a native of Clark county, Ohio, Reese Sellers has spent the greater part of his life in Louisa county, where for many years he was actively engaged in agricultural pursuits. His natal day was February 23, 1844. His parents, Warner and Maria (Bates) Sellers, were for many years residents of this county.

          At the age of six weeks Mr. Sellers was brought by his parents from the Buckeye state to Iowa, where he was educated and reared. After leaving school he devoted his attention to the work of the farm, having decided upon agriculture as his life vocation. He now owns a fine farm of eighty acres and his home place of ten acres in Cairo.

          Mr. Sellers was married on the 5th of November, 1868, to Miss Mary Elizabeth Weaver, a daughter of Erastus and Mary (Marshall) Weaver. In the maternal line she is a representative of one of the pioneer families of Louisa county. Her mother, Mrs. Mary Weaver, was a native of Ohio, having been born in the vicinity of Xenia on the 30th of April, 1829, and there she spent the first nine years of her life. In 1838 her father, John Marshall, migrated to the new section in the west which had but recently been thrown open to settlement through the Black Hawk purchase. Upon his arrival in this county he filed upon a large tract of land in the township which now bears his name, and here his daughter grew to womanhood. On the 29th of December, 1847, she was united in marriage to Erastus Weaver and they became the parents of nine children, as follows: Mary E., now Mrs. Sellers; Laura and Annie, both of whom died in in- . . .

Pg 59

. . . fancy; Emily Frances, the wife of W. H. Darrow, of Columbus Junction; Lucy, the wife of Sam Briggs, of this county; Clara, who resides at Morning Sun and is the wife of Dr. Allen; H. O., of Wapello; Henrietta, the wife of August Salmon, of Columbus Junction; and Alice, who died in infancy. Mrs. Weaver was one of those brave-hearted, fearless and noble women, who uncomplainingly bore all the hardships and struggles incident to pioneer life, even to the caring for her family while the husband and father went to the front to fight for his country. He enlisted in Company C, Sixteenth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, as a private. Mrs. Weaver always surrounded her children with love which ever engenders peace and harmony in the relations of life, at all times instilling into them the high ideals and noble principles of life, which have gone far toward making them the self-reliant and strong men and women they are today. She was a charter member of the Methodist Episcopal church which was established at Prairie Chapel in Marshall township in 1859. Her life was always guided and directed from the light within and she was ever constant and fearless in her devotion to what she believed to be right. She passed away on the 16th of November, 1898, and was laid to rest beside her parents in Fulton cemetery. For more than five years preceding her demise she had been an invalid but always bore with fortitude the pain and constantly increasing weakness, which at the last made death greatly to be desired.

          To Mr. and Mrs. Sellers were born three sons and two daughters, as follows: Aldivne, who is deceased; Frank, a resident of Louisa county; William D., deceased; Leona, the wife of Arthur Mewherter, of Louisa county; and George, who is at home.

          The church connection of the family is with the Methodist Episcopal denomination, and politically Mr. Sellers is a republican. He has never taken an active part in public affairs, however, always having found that the exacting demands of his own interests required his undivided attention.