George Escol Sellers (November 26, 1808 – January 1, 1899) was an American businessman, mechanical engineer, and inventor.

The company made machinery for producing wire and paper and was the first in the country to use forged frames to build locomotives.

[1][2] After Sellers closed his business in the east he moved with his brother Charles to Cincinnati, Ohio, and they established a factory for making lead pipe.

Sellers partnered with Josiah Lawrence, a Cincinnati businessman, and organized a wire manufacturing company called Globe Rolling Mills.

[2] He incorporated machinery that he designed in their production process and it proved to be more efficient in producing lead pipe and wire.

[1][2] During the American Civil War, Sellers moved to southern Illinois near the Ohio River and became interested in their mining operations.

He wrote several articles on the relics of the mound builders of Illinois — one published by Smithsonian Institution was on the aborigines' method of making earthenware salt pans.

[5] He also wrote detailed articles on how the local American Indians made arrowheads and stone age tools.

[1][2] He personally became so skilled at making arrowheads that some specimens of his craft were on display at the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.[3] He also had a substantial collection of pottery and implements of the prehistoric tribes of the Ohio valley.

[9] Sellers also had recognized artistic talent; Thomas Sully had urged him at an early age to become a portraitist and offered to teach him, but he was more interested in pursuing a vocational career.

[1][2] The first edition of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today had a fictional character — a satirical exploitative capitalist without redeeming social values — called "Colonel Eschol Sellers".

Warner stated that he had interacted with an "Eschol Sellers" 20 years prior to writing this book, and decided to use the name because of its rarity.

On January 1, 1874, Sellers replied, threatened to sue them if they did not change the name, and asked them to issue a disclaimer about the usage of his name.