♂Batchelder Sherman

Batchelder Sherman (27 August 1761 – 26 February 1828) was a Massachusetts-born farmer who served as a private in the New York militia during the Revolution, married his second cousin Waite Allen, and moved his large family from Cambridge, in Washington County, New York, to New Berlin in Chenango County. A Sherman family card file compiled in 1913 adds that he was a weaver by trade and that in 1815 he built a sawmill on an outlet of Chenango Lake that some of the family ran for fifty years. He was the third great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Salena Sherman (1806–1842).

Early life and the Revolution

Batchelder Sherman was born on 27 August 1761 at Dartmouth, in Bristol County, Massachusetts, a son of Henry Shearman (1730–1805) and Ruth Akin (1731–1821). After the Revolution his parents, his brothers Shubal and John, and his uncle Fortunatus all moved west to Cambridge, then in Albany County, New York. The clerks spelled his first name almost every way possible (Bathelor, Batchelor, Bachelor, Batchellor, Batcheldor, Bachedor), and his surname as both Sherman and Shearman.

A New York receipt roll dated 18 October 1787 lists “Batchelor Shairman” among the men paid in state certificates, under an act of 1784, for service in Colonel Lewis Van Woert’s regiment of militia in 1779 and 1780. He had signed his claim over to a Joseph Heath, who collected it on 21 March 1788. The roll records a “witness to the mark” for him, which means that he signed with a mark rather than with his name, and so could not write at the time. The 1913 card file calls him a soldier of the Revolution, a private in the 16th Regiment of New York militia under Colonels Blair and Van Woert, and notes land bounty rights. No federal pension file exists for him. He died in 1828, four years before the federal pension act of 1832 first opened pensions to men who had served only in the militia. A descendant wrote to the pension office from New York in 1911 to ask after “Bachelor Sherman (or Shearman)” of Cambridge, and the letter was filed with the papers of another Revolutionary soldier, Samuel Shearman.

Cambridge

He married Waite Allen (1766–1850), a daughter of Elisha Allen and Elizabeth Fish, at Cambridge. The date is not recorded, but their first child was born in February 1783.

Lines of descent

His mother Ruth Akin and Waite’s mother Elizabeth Fish were first cousins, both granddaughters of Preserved Fish and Ruth Cook of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, so the couple were second cousins.

Household at Cambridge

The 1790 census shows his household at Cambridge as one of four Sherman households in a row: his father Henry’s, his brother John’s, his own and his brother Shubal’s. In 1800 he was still at Cambridge, by then in Washington County, next to his father and to an Elijah Allen. A tax roll from those years assessed his real estate at 600 dollars, less than half the value of his father’s or of Shubal’s. His father’s will, made in 1801 and proved in 1805, named him and Shubal as executors. It left him, Shubal and John a lot in Cambridge, and required the three of them to keep their sister Deborah Duers in firewood, food and a cow after their mother died. In 1803 his uncle Fortunatus Sherman also named him an executor, and letters were granted to him with Lemuel Sherman and Nathan Wells. The 1810 census still found him at Cambridge, in the house next to his nephew William Duers and two doors from his widowed mother.

New Berlin

The card file dates the move to Chenango County to 1808, but the family was still at Cambridge in 1810. By 1818 he appears on a Chenango County land assessment alongside his son Reuben, and in 1820 the census recorded him at New Berlin, next door to his son Stephen.

The card file lists sixteen children born between 1783 and 1811. It includes two daughters named Alexia, born in 1787 and 1791, which suggests the first had died before the second was born. Ten of the sixteen were still living when he made his will “of New Berlin” on 2 January 1828. He left one dollar each to his sons Isaac, Stephen, Peter, Reuben, Allen and Laury, and to a Harvey Mayhew whose relationship to the family is not stated. The rest of his personal estate was to go to his wife for her lifetime and then be divided among his four daughters, Luna, Prudence, Salena and Wait. Salena and Luna were already married, and he left the use of his land to whichever of the other two remained single. He named his wife as executrix and Reuben as executor.

He died on 26 February 1828 and was buried at New Berlin. The will was proved on 15 October 1828. Waite outlived him by twenty-two years.

Notes

The will calls his daughter Luna “Laura Tuttle”, and it groups Laury among the sons, whereas the card file names that child Loria and does not say whether a son or a daughter. The six children on the card who are missing from the will are presumably those who died before 1828, but no record of their deaths has been found.

The card file gives Norwich, in Chenango County, as his place of death. The 1820 census and his will place him at New Berlin, about twelve miles away, where he is buried. His son Stephen’s children later lived at Norwich.

A reminiscence written decades later by F. S. Ainsworth, about the family’s stone house at Chenango Lake, gives the same birth date and says that he died on the 26th of the month after his son Reuben bought a lot in May 1825, that is, in June 1825. Since he made his will in January 1828, the 1825 date cannot be right. The same account calls Waite Allen a cousin of Ethan Allen of Ticonderoga, which no record has been found to test. It also traces the family to a clothier at Diss, in Norfolk, England, and to Philip Sherman, one of the men banished from Massachusetts in 1637 who went on to settle Portsmouth, Rhode Island. The 1913 card file gives his descent as Henry, Jabez, Philip, John and Philip. An earlier pamphlet on the Allen family wrongly said that Waite married an Oliver Sherman of Cambridge, and a genealogical periodical printed a correction naming Batchelder as her husband.