♀Agnes (surname unknown)

Agnes (buried 14 October 1580) was one of the wives of Henry Sherman, a shearman and clothier of Dedham, in Essex, England. She was most likely the eleventh great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Henry Sherman (1547–1610).

Marriage and children

Her maiden name and her parents are not known. Henry’s first wife, whom he married about 1539, was probably Agnes. In 1555 Thomas Butter, a Dedham clothier, left “to Harry Sherman’s wiffe a silver pott” in his will and made Henry his executor. The children of that marriage were Alice, Judith, Henry, Edmund, John and Robert, born from about 1542 to about 1560. Their son John, a tithingman of Dedham, was buried there on 16 October 1576.

Death

Agnes was buried at Dedham on 14 October 1580.

Notes

Her name

Thomas Townsend Sherman’s Sherman Genealogy (1920) calls her “probably Agnes Butler”, or Butter, a niece of Thomas Butter, from his bequest to “Harry Sherman’s wiffe” and from the will of his grandson Pierce Butter of Colchester, who in 1599 called her son Henry “my cosen”. Bertha Stratton’s New Light on Henry Sherman of Dedham, Essex, England (1954) follows it. A later study by M. J. Wood in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (2013) is reported to reject the Butter surname, and none is given here.

Her burial and her children

Her burial on 14 October 1580, as “Agnes Sharman”, stands in the Dedham register as transcribed for FreeREG. Wood, in New England Historical and Genealogical Register 166 (2012): 245–58, dates Henry’s first marriage about 1539 and says the first wife was probably the Agnes buried at Dedham on 14 October 1580 (166:256–57). He lists the children under that first wife, and allows that Agnes may instead have been a second wife, in which case she could have been the mother of at least one of the youngest children (166:257). Wood also suggests that the first wife may have been a daughter of Robert Perpoynt of Dedham; that is his suggestion only, and no surname is given for her here. Sherman Genealogy (1920) says Henry had no children by his later wives, which would make all six of the children hers. Her son Henry’s place in the family rests on his father’s will of 1589/90, which names him and his children.