♂Jabez Sherman

Jabez Sherman (23 October 1700 – 30 June 1774) was a shipwright and joiner of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, whose gravestone styles him “Lieut. Jabez Shearman”, a rank for which no record has been found. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Henry Shearman (1730–1805).

Early life and family

Jabez was born at Dartmouth, in Bristol County, then part of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, a son of Philip Sherman and Hannah Wilcox. His father’s will, made in May 1737 and proved at Taunton in April 1740 after Philip’s death at Dartmouth, names Jabez among the sons and Hannah as the wife then living. The town’s clerks spelled the family name both Sherman and Shearman, and the printed Dartmouth vital records treat the two spellings as one family.

In 1726 he married Jedidah Hawes (1709–1764) at Dartmouth. She was born at Edgartown, on Martha’s Vineyard, a daughter of Benjamin Hawes and Dorcas Smith. The Dartmouth register records eleven children of Jabez and Jedidah, born between 1728 and 1750: eight sons, Fortunatus, Henry, Benjamin, Prince, Jabez, Abishai, Elihu and Isaac, and three daughters, Deborah, Experience and Jedidah. Deborah married Jonathan Hathaway in 1754, and the youngest, Jedidah, married Robert Hathaway in November 1773. Jedidah Hawes died on 22 December 1764, in her fifty-sixth year, and her gravestone at Dartmouth names her as “the Wife of Jabez Sherman”.

Trade

His own will calls him a shipwright. The warrant for the inventory of his estate calls him a housewright, and the inventory lists a full set of “Joyners Tools” and two desks. Between them the three documents describe a man who worked in wood all his life, building ships, houses and furniture. His gravestone, however, reads “In Memory of Lieut. Jabez Shearman”. No commission, militia list or other record of military service has been found for him. A Sherman family card file compiled in 1913 says that he was a lieutenant in the British navy, but it gives no source for the statement.

Will and death

Jabez made his will on 15 June 1774, “being at this Time under bodily Infirmetys but of a Sound disposing mind”, and died fifteen days later, on 30 June 1774, in his seventy-fourth year. The will names no wife, since Jedidah had died ten years earlier. His son Fortunatus received the dwelling house and about nine and a half acres, was to pay his brother Jabez twenty pounds, and was named sole executor. Henry received about an acre and a half “where his Dwelling house is”, with a right of way to the road past his father’s house. Benjamin was left three pounds. Deborah received “the bed whereon I now Lie with the furniture thereto belonging”, which shows that he made the will from his sickbed. Experience, by then married to a Tallman, received a case of drawers, a small table, a small desk “and Two Pewter Platters that were her Mother[’s]”, and Jedidah received six shillings. The rest of the estate was divided equally among four other sons, Prince, Abishai, Elihu and Isaac.

On 5 July 1774 Benjamin Akin, a justice of the peace at Dartmouth, ordered three Dartmouth men to take the inventory. Their inventory valued the personal estate at £112 16s 1½d, with one horse and one cow as its only livestock. It also listed a debt owed by Jonathan Hathaway, his son-in-law. The will was proved on 8 August 1774. He was buried at Dartmouth, beside Jedidah.

Notes

The original entry of his birth in the Dartmouth register is damaged. The printed volume gives two transcriptions, one reading 3 October and the other 23 October 1700, and a compilation of 1933 repeats both. His gravestone’s “in the 74th year” fits either date.

Hannah’s maiden name is uncertain. The name Wilcox appears to belong to the second wife of another Philip Sherman, of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, born within months of Jabez’s father. The 1913 card file keeps the two men apart and, on the authority of an old family record, names this Philip’s wife as Hannah Smith, a daughter of John Smith. The same card file dates Jabez’s will 5 June 1774, but the probate copy reads the fifteenth.

A Connecticut church record index lists a Jabez Sherman admitted to the church at Windham on 1 December 1731, beside a Mehitabel Sherman. Every other record of this Jabez places him at Dartmouth, his wife was Jedidah, and Windham’s own vital records contain no Sherman family of that period, so the entry probably belongs to another man.

The printed Dartmouth vital records of deaths (p. 63) give his death in his seventy-fourth year, on the stone beside Jedidah’s, and hers on 22 December 1764 in her fifty-sixth year, on her own stone.