Santa Clara County Biographies


This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm



MRS. JOHN S. SELBY
(Sarah Elizabeth Brelsford)
came to California with Judge Rhodes family in 1854
 
Surnames: BRELSFORD, BALL, RHODES, TURLEY, TRIMBLE, ROBERTS, COOMBS, WALTZ

MRS. JOHN S. SELBY.--An estimable pioneer who is doubly interesting as a 
successful woman of affairs is Mrs. John S. Selby, who was Miss Sarah Elizabeth 
Brelsford before her marriage. She was born on October 2, 1840, the daughter of 
Charles and Mary (Ball) Brelsford, and lost her father when she was a little 
girl, after which her mother married for a second time. Grandfather James Ball, 
both a farmer and a carpenter, came from Kentucky to Bloomfield, Green County, 
Ind., and reared there his family; and at the same place our subject first saw 
the light of day.

In 1854, Miss Brelsford came to California, accompanying the family of the late 
Judge Rhodes of San Jose, and two years later she was married to John S. Selby, 
a native of Callaway County, Mo., where he was born on November 24, 1834. His 
parents were William and Julia (Turley) Selby, natives of Kentucky who were 
attracted to Missouri and became some of the earliest settlers of the Iron 
State. William Selby was also a carpenter as well as a farmer; and so it 
happened that John learned the carpenter's trade and also followed agricultural 
industries.

In the spring of 1853, when John Selby was eighteen years old, he set out from 
home to cross the continent to California, and having reached Santa Clara County 
in the fall of the same year, he then went to Marin County and worked in the 
redwoods district and remained there for a year. Then he came to San Jose and 
leased land in the Berryessa district and then bought and fenced in for himself 
some 150 acres of land in this district. In 1860 he sold that farm and moved 
with his devoted wife to the Mission Road, in the Orchard School district, about 
five miles north of San Jose, where he had acquired some 100 acres, but he sold 
part of this and besides his own land, some fourteen acres, he leased twenty-six 
acres. Eight acres he devoted to orchard culture, and had peach trees, several 
varieties of pear trees, cherry trees, apricot trees, besides some English black 
walnuts, persimmon, fig, plum, and apple trees and all kinds of berries, showing 
the fertility of the soil. He devoted the remaining six acres of the land to 
pasturage, and in addition to cultivating his fine farm, engaged in 
carpentering, often taking contract work. In 1906, at the ripe old age of 
eighty-two, Mr. Selby passed away, full of honor and rich in friends. He was a 
member of the Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County, elected in 1892 for 
one term of four years, serving there as a broad-minded Democrat, and for a 
number of years was the president of the Pioneer Society of Santa Clara County.

Seven children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Selby. Mary became Mrs. William E. 
Trimble of Los Gatos; Emma J., now deceased, was Mrs. R. B. Roberts of San Jose; 
William H. Selby, living in Naglee Park; Lizzie Lee married W. E. Coombs and 
resides at San Jose. The fifth is George Wray, an oil man of Santa Barbara 
County; a child also died in infancy, and Lulu passed away at the tender age of 
four. In 1908 Mrs. Selby sold the ranch and bought a place in Naglee Park, where 
she lived until she received her injury, when she sold out. In 1917 Mrs. Selby 
had a fall in which she broke her right arm, and this has since been a serious 
handicap, although she is still remarkably active for a woman of eighty-one. She 
is also an earnest, highly-esteemed member of the Pioneer Society, and of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church South. She resides with her granddaughter, Mrs. 
Waltz, at 132 Balbach Street, San Jose, the center of a group of very devoted 
friends.

Transcribed by Joseph Kral, from Eugene T. Sawyers' History of Santa Clara 
County, California,
published by Historic Record Co. , 1922. 483