John Lee of Nansemond Chapter, National Society Colonial Dames Seventeenth Century, welcomes two new members, Shelba Dawn Sellers of Thomasville and April Denise Ward Legg of Carlton.

Sellers was born in Columbus and attended first through 12th grades in Eufaula, Alabama, where she was the salutatorian of her class at Lakeside High School. She graduated from Emory University with a major in economics. Her juris doctorate degree was granted by the Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University. 

She served as a law clerk for Judge Dorothy Beasley, Georgia Court of Appeals, and then worked for the Honorable Lamar Davis, United States Bankruptcy Court, Savannah. Sellers resides in Thomasville where she is a practicing attorney. She is married to the Honorable Mark E. Mitchell, Thomas County State Court judge.

Legg was born in Tifton and graduated with honors from Cairo High School. She then graduated from the University of Georgia and did an internship at Iowa State University. Her master’s degree is in agronomy from the University of Georgia. 

 She has been a science teacher at Oglethorpe County Middle School and now teaches at Foothills Education Charter High School. This school was created to prevent high school dropouts and the students use a self-paced curriculum, receiving a regular high school diploma, not a GED. She and her husband, Jeremy, and two children live in Carlton where they operate a goat farm with more than 100 goats. She is a cancer survivor.

Sellers’ colonial ancestor is John Lewis, born about 1659-60 in New Kent County, Colony of Virginia. He married Elizabeth O’Brissell in Middlesex County, Colony of Virginia, October 24, 1681, and fathered four children. Lewis was a landowner in Middlesex County and died there September 3, 1705.

Legg’s colonial ancestor is William Alderman of Connecticut, born between 1640-56, in Massachusetts or Winsor (sic) or Windsor, Connecticut. He married Mary Case about 1680 in Winsor (sic) Hartford County, Connecticut, the first English settlement established in the Colony of Connecticut in the 1650s. Alderman fathered six children, was a landowner in Simsbury, Connecticut, and died in 1697 at Farmington, Hartford County, Connecticut.

The National Society Colonial Dames Seventeenth Century is a heritage organization whose members trace their lineal ancestors to the colonization of America in one of the 13 original colonies before 1701.