Lloyd McKinley Selby. 1896-1972

Headstone GPS Coordinates: 

Birth: 27 September 1896, Guernsey County, Ohio

Death: 13 August 1972, Bremerton, Kitsap County, Washington

Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: Margaret C. Selby née Wilson, Dempsey Wilson, Margaret Wilson née Woodruff, Mary Bell Selby,  Sarah C. Stillwell née Wilson, Margaret W. Stout née Stillwell , Alice Hite née Wilson, Joseph S. Selby

American Revolutionary War Patriots*: Mordecai Selby (Maryland) DAR# A101655, Nicholas Selby (Maryland) DAR# A101659, William Rogers (Maryland)

Disclaimer: These lines have not been officially proven by NSDAR standards

Lloyd McKinley Selby was born on September 27, 1896, in Guernsey County, Ohio—likely in either Cambridge or Byesville. His parents, Stanton Selby and Margaret Wilson, were both born in Ohio. Lloyd was the youngest of their seven children.

When Lloyd was two years old, tragedy struck. His father died from injuries sustained in a mining accident when the rope or cable lowering him into a coal shaft snapped, causing him to fall 120 feet. Lloyd’s mother remained in Ohio for several more years, but around 1906, the family moved west to Seattle to be near Margaret’s mother (Lloyd’s grandmother Wilson) and her extended family. Soon after their arrival, another tragedy occurred when Lloyd’s 14-year-old sister, Mary Bell, died from diphtheria and heart complications.

Lloyd attended public school while living in Seattle. Around 1914, him and his brothers Gorge and Joseph moved their mother Margaret south to San Francisco. Lloyd and his mother shared a home, while George and Joseph established their own nearby households.Lloyd went to work for the Pacific Coast Steel Company as a craneman. In 1917, when he registered for the World War I draft, he requested an exemption, noting that he was the sole provider for his mother.

In 1921, while still employed at the steel mill, a fire broke out after a furnace “lost a heat.” Lloyd and another worker suffered burns in the blaze, though neither was seriously injured, and the fire was quickly contained.

By 1927, Lloyd’s mother’s health had declined, and she required additional care. Him and his mother decided to move back to Washington, settling at Hite Center in Crosby. Lloyd’s sister Olive also moved into Hite Center to help care for their mother. 

In Crosby, Lloyd found work as a lineman on a gas shoveler—likely maintaining the cables and lines of a diesel-powered excavator used in local construction projects. His prior experience as a craneman in California would have served him well. He may have worked alongside his neighbor, Victor Card, who operated the gas shoveler as an engineer.

When Margaret Selby passed away in 1935, she was buried in Seabeck Cemetery. Lloyd and Olive continued to live at Hite Center, and by early 1940, he was working as a huckleberry brush picker. Later that year, in December, he was hired at the Bremerton Naval Yard.

In 1942, Lloyd’s brother Joseph returned from the Yukon, where he had lived for twenty years, and moved in with Lloyd. The brothers lived together through 1950, running their own brush-picking business. Eventually, Lloyd relocated to Port Gamble, where he worked at the local sawmill until his retirement in 1966 at the age of seventy. By then, he was the last surviving member of his family.

After retiring, Lloyd continued living in Port Gamble with his niece, Martha Harnden. In 1972, he suffered a stroke and was taken to the Bremerton Convalescent Center, where he passed away three days later on August 13, 1972. He was cremated at Woodlawn Crematory and interred at Seabeck Cemetery, marked by a handmade concrete gravestone.

Over time, knowledge of Lloyd’s burial in the cemetery was lost. Local historians Fred Just and Freddi Perry did not include his name in their Seabeck Cemetery burial lists. While working in the cemetery, Fred discovered a simple concrete marker reading “At Rest. 1896–1972,” but its owner was unknown. In 2023, during cemetery restoration work by the SCRP team, the same marker was rediscovered buried near a tree in the Brown family plot. Through research, an SCRP genealogist confirmed that the marker belonged to Lloyd Selby—his obituary noted burial at Seabeck Cemetery, and the birth and death dates matched the inscription. The SCRP team was thrilled to solve the mystery of the unidentified marker and to finally restore Lloyd McKinley Selby’s name to the Seabeck Cemetery burial list.