- History:
- Frontiers of Franche-Comte and Lorraine, the Vosges, the village was built Selles from age to age in alliance with the water.
- In the year 1230, under the regency of Blanche of Castile, mother of Louis IX, the village called Selles wrote Celles, is mentioned in documents of the church. At that time, it is not France but the duchy of Burgundy.
- Etymologically, it is estimated that this name could come from the Germanic Selles Cella under residential or utility room, store.
- Selles would have been a supply center established at the edge of Coney, in Gallo-Roman, as Selles upstream, the river was not navigable, but only buoyant.
- The insulation Selles compared to neighboring villages, because of the forest, the river Coney, lack of bridges and near the border with the Duchy of Lorraine, the connections with the outside were to be carried by river . Selles was therefore, with its port, the start of embryonic marine and river above the junction of North-South, Lorraine and Burgundy and beyond. Selles at that time was part of land Jonvelle.
- Because of its port, became a village of Selles boatmen who finds his vocation until the end of the last century.
- In an official report of an investigation dating back to 1465, we learn that the country's resources come from the river transport stacks, beams and cleaved (small boards), all these materials from quarries and surrounding forests. We also learn that only two boatmen could, at the time, driving on the Coney, barges (kind of rafts with flat edges) to the gates of Gray, on the Saone River, without any help. Selles border was therefore final and navigation on the Coney then on the Saone.
- In the 1840s, there were 195 houses Selles or equal to 245 homes in 1017 while the last population census acknowledges 250. The industry was thriving, a tile factory, a lime kiln, which was located on the right of the road, leaving the village towards Passavant. A recently built house, named "The Tile" is built on the site of the latter.
- Quarries were opened, producing a beautiful red sandstone popular for making stone, slabs, grindstones.
- The glassworks established in the north - Selles glassware - glassware of Morillon, now extinct, and La Rochere still in operation and world-renowned, using this mode of river transportation to ship their goods into the south of France, through the Coney, the Saone and the Rhone.
- The port whence these goods, was with a construction barge (kind of flat-bottomed boat), the forests provided the wood in abundance as for baking tiles, heating of glass furnaces, boat building; lacking only hemp for the construction site of his boats and clogging. Of "hemp fields" were thus planted on site in the alluvial fields. Harvested, hemp mill was completed in 300 meters of the existing bridge where they proceeded to "retting" (insulation fibers by soaking to remove non-woody), in the "scutching" (insulation rod the bark) and the "grinding" (to separate the fibers). After drying, the "spinners" proceeded to "comb" and the "Cordeliers" or "Tailpieces" sewed ropes and cables, son for the mooring of goods, and canvas bags. Not spun hemp or roughly trimmed used to seal the boats. Hemp production was so fully absorbed. Note that 100 kg of raw hemp provided only 13 kg of finished product. The boatloads went "no return": the boat was sold with her cargo of goods. They could charge 60 to 80 tons of cargo, their length ranging between 15 and 18 meters.
- Construction of the canal from the East, around 1880, spelled the end of this activity, its presence destroying the shipyard of Selles river. A harbor was built on the new channel for barges carrying from 200 to 250 tons. A dry dock for repairs and possible constructions was also fitted: one can still find the trace.
- Specialty: bun bakery Selles.
