52 Cousins~Candace (Sellers) Tosh (1808-1896)

 

CANDACE (SELLERS) TOSH

1808 – 1896

A Mother of Thirteen on the Tennessee Frontier

QUICK FACTS

Born	28 November 1808, Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina
Died	26 June 1896 (age 87), Carroll County, Tennessee
Parents	John Sellers (1782–1844) and Henrietta Norwood Sellers (1784–1866)
Spouse	Arthur Allen Tosh (1808–1876), married about 1831/32, Carroll County, Tennessee
Children	Thirteen — born between about 1833 and 1852
Burial	Christian Chapel Cemetery, Cedar Grove, Carroll County, Tennessee
Relationship to Charlie	1st cousin, five times removed

 

A CAROLINA GIRLHOOD

Candace Sellers was born on 28 November 1808 in Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, South Carolina, the daughter of John Sellers (1782–1844) and Henrietta Norwood Sellers (1784–1866). She grew up in a large household on the Carolina upcountry frontier, one of at least ten children. Her siblings — Nancy, Catherine, John W., Hardy S., Zilphia, Richard Caswell, William R., Joseph C., and Francis Marion Sellers — would scatter across the South in the decades to come, but in the 1810s and 1820s the Sellers family was still rooted in the Chesterfield District, part of the same Carolina Sellers network from which Charlie's own confirmed Sellers line descends.

Sometime in the late 1820s or very early 1830s, like so many Carolina families chasing cheaper land, the Sellerses — or Candace herself as a young woman — made the long overland move west into Tennessee. It was there, in Carroll County, that she would spend the rest of her life.

MARRIAGE AND A GROWING HOUSEHOLD

About 1831 or 1832, in Carroll County, Tennessee, Candace married Arthur Allen Tosh, a young farmer born 8 August 1808 in Kentucky, the son of John Tosh Sr. (1777–?) and Margaret Johnson. Arthur and Candace settled into farming life in the county's rural 13th District, and over the next two decades their household filled with children — eventually thirteen in all, born between about 1833 and 1852:

#	Name	Birth–Death	Notes
1	Thomas Jefferson Tosh	1833 – 1869	Farmer; predeceased his mother
2	Francis Asbury “Berry” Tosh	1834 – 1912
3	Elizabeth Jane Tosh	1835 – 1882	Never married; kept house for her mother
4	Nancy Faulkner Tosh	1836 – 1924	m. John Z. Kelley, 1866; later Springer
5	Riley (Rilah) S. Tosh	1837 – 1916
6	John Green Tosh	1838/39 – 1886	Predeceased his mother; omitted from her obituary's count
7	Martha Catherine Tosh	1840 – 1933	m. ___ Eskew
8	Zilpha Louisa Tosh	1841 – 1878	m. Jacob Marion Kelley, 1872; predeceased her mother
9	James Alvin Tosh	1843 – 1917
10	Hardy Harrison Tosh	1845 – 1912
11	William Perry Tosh	1846 – 1936	m. Susan Rhodes
12	Jeptha Allen Tosh	1848 – 1912
13	Lucinda Ellen Tosh	1851 – 1938	m. ___ Dortch; unmarried in 1880, living with mother

The couple's eldest, Thomas Jefferson Tosh, was born in 1833, and their youngest, Lucinda Ellen, arrived nearly twenty years later in 1851–52 — meaning Candace bore and raised children across almost the entire span of her thirties and forties.

THE CENSUS YEARS: A FAMILY TRACKED ACROSS DECADES

The 1850 federal census captured the Tosh household at its fullest. In District 13, Carroll County, Arthur Tosh, 42, farmer, headed a home that included Candace, 40, and eleven children still at home, ranging from seventeen-year-old Thomas Jefferson down to one-year-old Jeptha Allen — all born in Tennessee.

By 1860 the family had moved a few miles to District 8, and the household had thinned as the eldest sons struck out on their own; nine children still lived under Arthur and Candace's roof, from twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth Jane down to eight-year-old Lucinda Ellen. Ten years later, in 1870, only four children remained at home — Elizabeth Jane, Zilpha Louisa, Jeptha Allen, and Lucinda Ellen — a household visibly emptying as sons and daughters married and moved to farms of their own.

Arthur Allen Tosh died on 3 October 1876 at about age sixty-eight, leaving Candace a widow in her late sixties. The 1880 census shows her, at seventy, as head of her own household in District 8 — no longer “wife” but “Candis Tosh, Head.” Living with her were her unmarried daughters Elizabeth (44) and Lucinda (27), her widowed daughter Nancy Kelly (43), and two of Nancy's children, grandchildren J. M. and Luela Kelly. It is a small, telling snapshot of frontier widowhood: three generations of women holding a household together after the men of the family had died or moved on.

WIDOWHOOD, FAITH, AND FINAL YEARS

Candace Sellers Tosh outlived her husband by twenty years. She died on 26 June 1896 in Carroll County, Tennessee, at the age of eighty-seven, after what her family described as nine months of suffering borne “with unwavering fortitude.” She was buried beside Arthur at Christian Chapel Cemetery in Cedar Grove, near Leach, Carroll County — the same burying ground that would come to hold several of their children.

IN HER GRANDDAUGHTER'S WORDS

The most vivid record of Candace's life comes not from a courthouse ledger but from her own family. Shortly after her death, a granddaughter wrote a tender obituary that ran in the Gospel Advocate of Nashville on 27 August 1896 (page 556), later preserved and shared on Find A Grave by researcher Linda Kasyan. It reads, in the granddaughter's own words, as a portrait of a woman whose religious devotion anchored the family through hardship:

From the Family: The Granddaughter's Obituary (Gospel Advocate, 27 Aug. 1896) “It is with sadness of heart that I write the obituary of my grandmother, Mrs. Candis Tosh, who died June 26, 1896... She has been a devoted member of the church of Christ for a number of years. She lived a circumspect and Christian life from the day that she obeyed the gospel till her blessed Redeemer bade the spirit quit the prison house of mortality... She was a great sufferer for nine months before her death, but she bore it with unwavering fortitude. She leaves nine children and a host of relatives and friends to mourn their loss; but we mourn not, as those who have no hope, for our loss is her eternal gain.” — as transcribed on Find A Grave Memorial #54901327, obituary contributed by Linda Kasyan.

The obituary's count of “nine children” surviving is, in fact, a small piece of evidence in itself. Candace bore thirteen children, but by 1896 four had already died: Thomas Jefferson (1869), Zilpha Louisa (1878), Elizabeth Jane (1882), and John Green (1886). Thirteen less four leaves exactly nine — confirming that the granddaughter's tribute was not a rounded figure but a precise, grieving count of the living.

A NOTE ON THE RECORD

Research Notes Birth date discrepancy: the granddaughter's 1896 obituary gives Candace's birth as “Dec. 28, 1809,” but her Find A Grave summary, census-derived age calculations, and the family group sheet all support 28 November 1808. The obituary was written from memory soon after a difficult death and likely reflects a granddaughter's imprecise recollection rather than a documented date. Father's birth year: sources disagree on John Sellers's birth year — 1772 in one family-sheet citation versus 1782 on his own Find A Grave memorial and in the notes accompanying this summary. This should be resolved against primary South Carolina records before it is treated as settled. Nancy Faulkner Tosh: family-sheet notes describe her 1866 marriage to John Z. Kelley in Carroll County, while her Find A Grave entry carries the surname “Springer,” suggesting a second marriage after Kelley's 1869 death that has not yet been fully documented here. John Green Tosh (1838/39–1886): present in the 1850 census (age 12) and among Candace's Find A Grave-listed children, but absent from the granddaughter's written obituary tribute and from some family-sheet counts — consistent with his early death in 1886, a decade before his mother's.

LEGACY

Candace Sellers Tosh's life traces one of the great, ordinary migrations of the early American South: a Carolina-born daughter who followed the westward pull of cheap Tennessee land, married a Kentucky-born farmer, and spent nearly six decades raising a family of thirteen in Carroll County. She buried a husband and four of her own children, yet the record left behind — four decennial census listings, a heartfelt grandchild's obituary, and a still-marked grave at Christian Chapel Cemetery — shows a woman whose faith and endurance were remembered fondly by the generation that followed her. Her descendants, through sons and daughters who themselves raised large Carroll County families, carried the Tosh name and the Sellers blood forward into the twentieth century.

Candace Sellers Tosh is my 1st Cousin 5X Removed. 

SOURCES

Find A Grave, database and images (findagrave.com), memorial page for Candace Sellers Tosh (1808–1896), Find A Grave Memorial #54901327, Christian Chapel Cemetery, Cedar Grove, Carroll County, Tennessee; obituary contributed by Linda Kasyan.

1850 U.S. Census, Carroll County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 13, page 110A–B, dwelling/family 1456, household of Arthur Tosh; NARA microfilm M432, roll 873/889.

1860 U.S. Census, Carroll County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 8, page 74A, dwelling 938, family 927, household of Arthur Tosh; NARA microfilm M653, roll 1243.

1870 U.S. Census, Carroll County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 8, page 364A, dwelling/family 32, household of Arthur Tosh; NARA microfilm M593, roll 1517.

1880 U.S. Census, Carroll County, Tennessee, population schedule, District 8, enumeration district 014, page 90A, dwelling/family 32, household of Candis Tosh; NARA microfilm T9, roll 1246.

“Mrs. Candace Sellers Tosh” (obituary), Gospel Advocate, Nashville, Tennessee, 27 August 1896, p. 556.

Family group sheet and individual summary compiled by Charles Purvis, 23 September 2026. 52 Cousins~Candace (Sellars) Tosh (1808-1896) created using Claude Sonnett 5 Median.