Cedar Island’s lost love: The story of Hillsdale’s most well-known loner

Home Features Cedar Island’s lost love: The story of Hillsdale’s most well-known loner
Cedar Island’s lost love: The story of Hillsdale’s most well-known loner
Bud Sellars’ island home.
Courtesy | Hillsdale Historical Society

Rarely does one become famous by spending his time alone. Bud Sellars was the exception.

After he moved to Hillsdale in 1880, Albert “Bud” Sellars became a fixture of the Hillsdale community. He was well known for living in a cottage on Lake Baw Beese’s Cedar Island, and because of this, he earned the title of a hermit. However, Sellars did not fit this reclusive stereotype.

Sellars was born in 1855. There are differing accounts of his childhood, according to the Hillsdale Historical Society, but they all seem to point back to Deerfield, Michigan. Some records list California as Sellars’ place of birth, but the census of 1860 places him in Deerfield at the age of five. 

He is also listed as living here at the age of fifteen, which indicates that Deerfield is likely where Sellars grew up. He eventually moved to Hillsdale, according to the 1880 census, where he boarded with Henry Keefer and his family. Some say that Sellars became ill, at which point he moved to Cedar Island in an attempt to remedy his condition. 

After building a cottage on Cedar Island, Sellars was not content with a life of isolation. In fact, he enjoyed hosting social events. 

According to the Hillsdale Historical Society, he often provided passengers on the steamship Edna D. with “justly famous fish dinners.” Sellars even built a long wharf alongside the island, to make it easier for the Edna D. to dock. In photos from the Hillsdale Historical Society, Sellars is pictured hosting guests next to the wharf. 

According to the Hillsdale Historical Society, Sellars would often host fishermen, hunters, and members of the local Kiwanis Club on the island. Over the course of just a few days, Sellars claimed that he had hosted 175 visitors. 

Bud Sellars moved to an island on Baw Beese, perhaps for heath reasons…or perhaps to heal his broken heart. Courtesy | The Hillsdale Historical Society

Then-owners of Cedar Island, the Dickerson family, had been allowing Sellars to live on the island rent-free. After his death in 1931, the Dickerson family continued to take care of the island, renovating Sellars’ cottage. The island continued to be well-kept until the infamous Palm Sunday Tornado of April 11, 1965, which ravaged Hillsdale County. Sellars’ original cottage was severely damaged by the tornado, and the island fell into disrepair. In 1992, the Moore family purchased the island, restoring it as best as they could, until they put it up for sale in 2015.

Sellars lived a simple life on Cedar Island, but he had a storied past, which even included a tragic romance, some claim. As reported by the Hillsdale Historical Society, one account of his childhood included family travels to California, where he became close friends with a girl named Ruth. 

The story claims that after Ruth grew up, she moved to Chicago with her family. Living in Hillsdale, Sellars worked for years educating himself in order to write letters to her. But by the time he finally learned to write, Ruth had already married another man. Eventually, her husband died, leaving Ruth a widow. Sellars then pursued the newly-available Ruth through correspondence, at which point their friendship blossomed into a romance, and further down the road, an engagement. When Sellars allegedly traveled to Chicago to meet Ruth and her family, he arrived to the news that his fiancee had gone missing. Several months later, Ruth’s body was supposedly found in Lake Michigan. Legend has it that Sellars then returned to live on Hillsdale’s Cedar Island to forget his lost love. Although romantic, the Hillsdale Historical Society says that this story is “clearly delusional.” 

However, there are records of a woman named Ruth Height who died in 1878, when Sellars was 23 years old. She resided in the town of Hudson, which lies along the route that Sellars could have taken from Deerfield, his childhood home, to Hillsdale. Height’s death records also indicate that she was a widow. The fact that Height died when Sellars was 23, was a widow, and lived where they could have easily crossed paths in their youth, points to the possibility that Height could have been the Ruth described in the account above.

Map of Sellars’ possible route from Deerfield to Hillsdale through
the Hudson. Map ca. 1881. Courtesy | Logan Washburn

Any connection with Sellars is unlikely, as there are no records of Height’s birth, and she is described as an “early settler” of the area. Therefore, it is possible– but doubtful– that Sellars had a tragic romance with a widow named Ruth, minus some of the more far-fetched details of the story.

Though the hermit of Cedar Island is no more, his legacy will continue to live on in the hearts of the storied, hospitable, and hard-working people of Hillsdale.