Sandford Sellers (1854 - 1938) served as Principal, Superintendent and President of Wentworth Military Academy from 1880 to 1935.
Sandford Sellers was born in Kentucky in 1854, but was raised on a ranch in eastern Texas. As a young boy, he worked in cotton and sugar cane fields, As a young adult, he was a cowboy, roping, branding, and herding cattle. In 1872, he returned to Kentucky and eventually attended Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1877 and a Master of Arts degree in 1879. After a year as a Professor of English at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, his classmate Benjamin L. Hobson convinced him to come to Lexington, Missouri to help start Wentworth Male Academy in 1880. When Hobson left to pursue a career in the ministry at the end of the 1880-81 school year, Sellers took sole charge of the academy. For the next 58 years, he led Wentworth and built it into an institution with a national reputation. Sandford Sellers died in 1938.
After stepping down from active leadership of Wentworth in 1923, he was succeeded in leading the school by a number of his descendants, including son Sandford Sellers, Jr. (1923-1933), son James M. Sellers (1933-1960), grandson James M. Sellers, Jr. (1973-1990), and great-grandson William W. Sellers (2008-present).