Margaret C. Selby née Wilson, (1861-1935)

Headstone GPS Coordinates: 

Birth: 1 September 1861, Zanesville, Muskingum County, Ohio

Death: 3 August 1935, Crosby, Kitsap County, Washington

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

American Revolutionary War Patriots*: Unknown

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

 

Margaret “Maggie” Wilson Selby was born on September 1, 1861, in Zanesville, Muskingum County, Ohio, to Dempsey Wilson, a Civil War veteran, and his wife Margaret (Woodruff) Wilson. She was the fourth of their five living children. The Wilson family later settled in Summerfield, Noble County, Ohio, where Dempsey worked as a saddler and leather goods maker. In 1870, the eldest daughter helped support the family by tying tobacco leaves for extra income, while Margaret and her younger siblings stayed home with their mother and attended school.

When Margaret was nineteen years old, she married twenty-year-old Stanton Selby on January 1, 1882, in Guernsey County. That same November, the young couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Goldie. Over the next fourteen years, they had six more children, born roughly every two to three years: George (1884), Ethel (1887), Joseph (1889), Olive (1891), Mary (16 Jan 1893), and Lloyd (1896). The family lived primarily in Cambridge and Zanesville.

To support his growing family, Stanton worked in the coal mines. In 1899, while employed at the Trail Run Mine in Cambridge, tragedy struck. As he was being lowered into the mine shaft in a cage, the rope snapped, sending him plunging 120 feet. Remarkably, he survived the fall but suffered broken ribs and a fractured arm. The broken ribs punctured his lung, and although he remained conscious for about a day, he succumbed to his injuries on June 9, 1899, at just thirty-seven years old. His death left Margaret a widow with seven children ranging in age from sixteen to two.

In October of that year, Margaret settled a claim against the James W. Ellsworth Coal Company, owners of the Trail Run Mine, for her husband’s wrongful death caused by faulty equipment.

Margaret continued to live in Jackson, Guernsey County, working as a seamstress to support her family. Her fifteen-year-old son George found work as a farm laborer, while the younger children remained in school.

Her eldest daughters soon began families of their own: Goldie married in 1903 and remained in Cambridge, while Ethel married in Guernsey County the following year and also stayed nearby.

Around over a decade earlier in 1889, Margaret’s parents and several siblings had moved west to Seabeck, Washington. In 1906, Margaret decided to join them, bringing her five unmarried children to Seattle. The family settled in the Wallingford neighborhood.

Sadly, another tragedy soon struck. Fourteen-year-old Mary Bell, who had heart problems, contracted diphtheria and passed away, likely at home on April 30, 1907. Her remains were taken to Seabeck Cemetery, where her grandfather, Dempsey Wilson, was buried. Although no marker survives, the late historian Fred Just’s plot map indicates she was buried near her grandfather.

By 1910, Margaret was renting a home in Seattle with her children George, Joseph, Olive, and Lloyd. George worked as a surveyor, Joseph as a construction laborer, while Olive helped her mother at home and Lloyd attended public school.

A decade later, in 1920, Margaret was living in San Francisco with her youngest son Lloyd, who was employed as a craneman in the steel industry. Joseph was also in San Francisco, working in a lumber yard until he was called to serve during World War I.

In April 1927, Margaret, Lloyd, and Joseph returned to Washington, settling in Crosby and living at Hite Center with Margaret’s sister, Alice (Wilson) Hite and other members of the Hite family.

On August 3, 1935, Margaret passed away there from heart failure at the age of seventy-three. Her daughter Olive, who had moved to Hite Center several years earlier, was the informant on her death certificate. The record notes that Margaret was buried whole, not cremated. Although no marker is currently known, researchers believe she may rest near where her parents are buried.

Margaret Wilson Selby likely descends from several Revolutionary War patriots, though both her parents’ ancestral lines are difficult to trace beyond her grandparents. While there are potential connections, further genealogical research is needed to confirm these links.

It is likely that Margaret Selby and her daughter Mary Bell Selby were both buried intact near the Wilson graves. The SCRP hopes to conduct a ground-penetrating radar scan next year to help identify possible burial locations for Margaret and Mary.