Tombstone Tuesday~Joseph Hardy Sellers

b. Aug. 5, 1853

d. Oct. 6, 1878

bu. Gaddy-Sellers Cemetery¹

Photo Courtesy of Julious Burr

Note: Weather has taken it’s toil on this tombstone making it almost totally illegible.

Young Joseph Hardy Sellers was only 25 years old when he took his own life. No one today knows what possessed this young man to take the course of action that he chose.
 
Saturday, October 12, 1878, MONROE ENQUIRER (Union County, NC)-We learn that on last Sunday, Mr. Joseph SELLERS, a young man about 24 years old, and living near Chesterfield CH [Courthouse], committed suicide by shooting himself with a pistol...²

Joseph Hardy was born  in August 1853 to Hardy Huntley Sellers and Mary Eliza Sinclair. This was their 3rd child and an older brother and sister preceded him. He also had a twin sister and a younger brother. His father Hardy Huntley Sellers passed away when he was a mere 3 years and 5 months old.  

It’s almost certain that without a father, his Mother Mary struggled to raise their family of 5 siblings throughout the war years (1861-1865) and throughout the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877). 

Joseph Hardy Sellers is my 1st cousin 5 times removed.  




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[1] Find A Grave, Inc., Find A Grave, database and digital images, (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 23 June 2013); Memorial page for Joseph Hardy Sellers; (5 August 1853–6 October 1878); Find a Grave memorial # 42742799, Citing Gaddy-Sellers Cemetery; Ruby, Chesterfield County, South Carolina, USA.
[2] Julie Hampton Ganis, http://www.usgwarchives.net/, CHESTERFIELD CO., SOUTH CAROLINA - Miscellaneous Newspaper Accounts (http://files.usgwarchives.net/sc/chesterfield/newspapers/misc01.txt : viewed 23 Jan 2014), Death of Joseph Sellers, committed suicide by shooting himself with a pistol..., 7 October 1878.