♀Hannah Smith

Hannah Smith (1681 – 10 September 1744) was the wife of Philip Sherman (1675–1740), a farmer of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, whose will of 1737 names her as his wife. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Jabez Sherman (1700–1774).

Birth and marriage

Find a Grave gives her birth as 1681 at Dartmouth, then in Plymouth Colony^W. Hannah was probably the daughter of Lieutenant John Smith of Dartmouth and his wife Ruhamah, a daughter of Richard Kirby of Sandwich. Her father’s will, dated 8 June 1691, left “to my daughter Hannah Smith one cow, one bed and bedding together with what I have already given her.” On 10 January 1693/4, still unmarried, she gave a receipt for that legacy. Her brother Deliverance, who was executor together with their mother, submitted the estate’s accounts.

Hannah married Philip Sherman by 1699, and the couple had seven children, born at Dartmouth between 1699 and 1713. On 13 December 1712 Philip bought part of a Dartmouth share of land from Judah Smith, a son of John Smith. When the youngest son, Abraham, married at Dartmouth in 1750, the town register called him a son of Philip and Hannah, both by then dead. Philip made his will on 16 May 1737, leaving bequests to his wife Hannah and to four surviving sons, and he died at Dartmouth on 29 February 1740.

Death

Hannah died at Dartmouth in September 1744. The Find a Grave memorial gives the date as 10 September, and the card file, from the family record, gives 11 September. A modern granite marker at Dartmouth, cut “Shearman”, bears her name beside Philip’s with the years 1681–1744 and gives her maiden name as Smith. Its second line says “Cenotaph”, which marks it as a memorial and not a grave, so the place of her burial is not known.

Notes

Surname

Her maiden name is not in the marriage record. Torrey’s compiled list of New England marriages gives Wilcox only with a question mark, as a name the record does not contain, and offers Sarah Jenney as an alternative. Older accounts gave Wilcox as her maiden name in error. That surname belongs to Hannah (Wilcox) Clark, a widow born at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in 1684, who in 1717 became the second wife of a different Philip Sherman of Portsmouth, born within months of Hannah’s husband. The modern marker and the 1913 card file give Smith.

Identification

The identification of this Hannah with Philip Sherman’s wife is probable, not proven. A family record kept by the family of a grandson, Capt. David Sherman, names Philip’s wife as Hannah Smith, daughter of John Smith. The 1913 card file gives that record, and the modern marker agrees with it. The will of Lieutenant John Smith of Dartmouth and the receipts of January 1693/4 show a Hannah Smith, his unmarried daughter, in Philip’s town and generation. The 1712 deed names no kin relation between Judah Smith and Philip. No record joins Hannah Smith to Philip by name: the Dartmouth marriage records have no entry for Philip and Hannah, and Dwight’s The Kirbys of New England (1898) lists Hannah among John Smith’s children but gives her no marriage.

Birth year

The birth year 1681 comes from Find a Grave, which follows the modern marker. That marker is cut “Cenotaph”, so it is a memorial and not a contemporary record. A Hannah Smith who gave a receipt in her own name on 10 January 1693/4 was probably born by about 1676, if she was of age to sign for herself at that date. A birth in 1681 would have made her about twelve when she signed. Neither possibility is settled by a record.

Records

The will of John Smith, dated 8 June 1691, is abstracted from Bristol County Probate Book 1, page 55, in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, volume 62 (1908). The receipts of 10 January 1693/4 appear in Probate Book 1, pages 161–162, printed in volume 63 (1909). The deed of 13 December 1712 is in the Bristol County land records and was entered on 20 May 1713. A compilation of New England marriages before 1700 gives Philip’s marriage without an exact date, and neither the Dartmouth marriage records nor the printed vital records of Newport County, Rhode Island, contain an entry for it.