♂John Sherman

John Sherman (August 1644 – 16 April 1734) was a farmer of Dartmouth, in Bristol County, Massachusetts, who kept a smith’s shop and whose will of 1720 names six of his children. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Philip Sherman (1675–1740).

Origins

Compiled genealogies give his birth as August 1644 at Portsmouth, Rhode Island. His parents were most probably Philip Sherman (1611–1687) of Portsmouth^W and Sarah Odding, although no known record states the relationship outright. Philip Shearman’s will, dated 31 July 1681 and proved on 22 March 1686/7, leaves “my son John my bay mare”. John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887), a compilation, identifies that son as the Dartmouth man who married Sarah Spooner, and the details it gives for him fit: a birth in 1644, the wife and her parents, a will dated 19 June 1720 and proved on 21 May 1734, and Philip and Timothy as executors. John’s own will refers to “my brother Peleg Shearman deceased”, and Peleg was one of Philip’s sons. Compiled Sherman genealogies, among them a family card file, also make John a son of Philip. The records and indexes spell the family name both Sherman and Shearman; he signed his own will Shearman.

Marriage and children

He married Sarah Spooner (born 1653) in 1675; she outlived him. A compilation of New England marriages before 1700 gives the marriage as about 1675, or about 1670, at Dartmouth, and prints her surname in square brackets. That is the compiler’s sign that the name is not in the marriage record itself and was supplied from another source. Other compilations date the marriage 13 November 1674 at Dartmouth.

Their son Philip was the eldest of the children. Between 1678 and 1691 Dartmouth’s town clerk recorded the births of six more to John Shearman: Joshua, Abigail, Hannah, Isaac, Ephraim and Timothy. The entries name only the father. John’s will calls Isaac, Ephraim and Timothy his sons and Abigail Chase and Hannah Akin his daughters, which matches the clerk’s list; Joshua is the one of the six it does not name, and the records do not show what became of him.

Farm and will

On 11 October 1698 John, called a yeoman of Dartmouth, deeded 86 acres to “my son Phillip Shearman”, land “whereon I now Dwel”. The deed was acknowledged on 3 September 1703 and entered in the county’s land records on 11 November that year. A Harvey family history, a compilation, calls John a farmer and “prominent citizen” of Dartmouth and says that he took the oath of fidelity at the Plymouth court on 3 June 1668 and was admitted a freeman, with the right to vote, on 7 June 1681.

He made his will on 19 June 1720. It names his wife Sarah and his son Philip, one of the executors, and leaves forty shillings to Isaac and eight pounds to Ephraim. Timothy was made the other executor and received John’s “Shop and Smith Tools”. The daughters, Abigail Chase and Hannah Akin, received three pounds and twenty shillings. A grandson, John Shearman, was left twenty shillings, and two grandchildren, Jonathan and Phebe Shearman, twenty shillings each “to buy each of them a bible”. The will does not say whose children the grandchildren were.

John died at Dartmouth on 16 April 1734, fourteen years after writing the will, and it was proved on 21 May 1734.

Notes

Two indexes agree on the death date of 16 April 1734, while a Find a Grave memorial gives 16 April 1731 and places his burial at Dartmouth. The probate of his will in May 1734 fits 1734, not 1731. The birth, the burial and the 1674 and 1675 marriage dates rest on compilations only.

Hannah’s birth is given as 13 July 1682; the town clerk wrote only “July”. The clerk wrote Abigail’s year as 1608, plainly a slip, and the year given for her birth is 1680. Hannah is the only Hannah born to a Shearman father at Dartmouth between 1672 and 1692, and she is the Hannah Akin of the will.

The Harvey family history and a Sherman family website give marriages for the children that no known record confirms: Abigail to Nathaniel Chase on 2 November 1703, Hannah first to William Bowen and then to John Akin, Isaac to a Sarah, Ephraim to Mehitabel Tripp, and Timothy to Deborah Akin in 1718. The Dartmouth records do show a son Edward born to Ephraim and Methetabel in 1712 and a daughter Deborah born to Timothy and Deborah in 1730. The same sources add a son John who died young, and the website a marriage for Joshua to a woman named Alice Tripp, with two children; neither is in the town records.

John’s parentage is probable, not proved. The text of Philip Sherman’s will is known from a transcript of the Portsmouth land-evidence record, not from the record itself, and Austin’s dictionary is a compilation. The will does not say where its son John lived, so the identification with the Dartmouth man rests on Austin, on the name, and on the brother Peleg named in John’s own will. The Portsmouth will does leave another son, Edmund, land at Ponagansett, in Dartmouth, which ties Philip’s family to Dartmouth.

A compiled Mayflower genealogy gives a John Sherman a wife named Sarah Baker and nine children. They belong to a different man of the same name. Massachusetts town records date that couple’s marriage to 26 March 1712 at Marshfield, in Plymouth County, many years after this John’s marriage and after his son Philip’s birth. This John Sherman is also not the Captain John Sherman of Watertown, Massachusetts, whose line leads to Roger Sherman.