♂Philip Sherman

Philip Sherman (baptized 5 February 1610/1 – before 19 March 1686/7) was a yeoman of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, who left Roxbury in Massachusetts with the religious dissenters of 1638, helped to found Portsmouth and kept the records of both the town and the colony. He was most likely the eighth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son John Sherman (1644–1734).

Roxbury

John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887) gives 5 February 1610 as his birth at Dedham, in Essex, England; Anderson prints the same day as his baptism there, in the double-dated form 5 February 1610/1. Austin and Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins agree that he came to Massachusetts in 1633, settled at Roxbury and was made a freeman of the colony in 1634. The Roxbury church’s record of its members, as Anderson prints it, says he came over “a single man” and afterwards married Sarah Odding, the daughter of John Porter’s wife by an earlier husband. It describes him as “of a melancholy temper” who “lived honestly & comfortably among us several years”, and says he went back to England “upon a just calling” and returned.

The break with Massachusetts

In 1636–1638 the Antinomian Controversy^W, a dispute over the teaching of Anne Hutchinson^W and her brother-in-law the Rev. John Wheelwright^W, split the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. The Roxbury church record traces Philip’s part in it to John Porter, his wife’s stepfather: once Porter “was so carried away with these opinions of familism & schism”, Philip “followed them & removed with them to the Iland”, and he was “cast out of the church”. Anderson, citing the colony’s court records, lists him among the supporters of Wheelwright whom Massachusetts ordered disarmed.

Portsmouth

Austin and Anderson both record that he signed the Portsmouth Compact^W on 7 March 1637/8, the covenant by which the dissenters formed themselves into a body politic before they settled Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island. In the new town he was chosen a selectman on 30 April 1639, and on 10 February 1639/40 he was granted 200 acres.

Austin gives him the office of Secretary from 1639. The colony’s records, as Anderson gives them, make him its General Recorder in 1648, 1649 and 1650, and on 4 November 1651 the colony called for its records from Philip Sherman, “late recorder of this colony”. He kept Portsmouth’s own records as town clerk from 1649 to 1656, sat on the town council between 1649 and 1657 and again from 1670 to 1673, and went to the colony’s General Court as a deputy for Portsmouth in 1665.

Will and death

He made his will on 31 July 1681, calling himself “yeoman, aged seventy-one years, of the Town of Portsmouth”. It is known from a transcript of the Portsmouth record. He left Sarah, “my loving wife”, a room in the house and ten ewe sheep, and charged his son Samuel, the sole executor, to keep her for the rest of her life. Samuel received the home farm and the house, and Samson was to have half of the farm after Sarah’s death. To Samson he also left “all those four Indians which we jointly bought”, Native people whom the two men held as property. The other sons, Eber, Peleg, Edmund, John and Benjamin, received land, sheep or horses, and the daughters, Sarah, Mary, Hannah and Philip, as the will names her, received sheep or money. The will was proved on 22 March 1686/7, and he had died by then.

Lines of descent

The will’s son John, left “my bay mare”, is most likely the John Sherman (1644–1734) who settled at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and married Sarah Spooner. Austin identifies the two as the same man, and Anderson gives Philip a son John, born in 1644, who married Sarah Spooner. The family already had a footing at Dartmouth, for the same will leaves Edmund meadow and upland at Ponagansett “within the township of Dartmouth”. The Dartmouth John’s own will of 1720 mentions “my brother Peleg Shearman deceased”, which fits Philip’s son Peleg, whose will Austin dates to 1719. The Portsmouth will does not say where its son John lived, so the link is probable rather than proven.

Notes

Austin’s 1610 and Anderson’s 1610/1 are one date: the year began on 25 March in the old reckoning, so 5 February 1610 is February 1611 in the modern one. Anderson gives the event as a baptism at Dedham and, following Thomas Townsend Sherman’s Sherman Genealogy (1920), names his father as Samuel Sherman. The baptism stands in the Dedham parish register, as transcribed for FreeREG, on 5 February 1610/11: “Philipe” Sharman, son of “Samewelt” Sharman. The register names no mother; the will of Samuel Sherman of Dedham and Ardleigh, made in January 1615/16, names his wife Philippa and a son Philip. That the Dedham child is the Portsmouth settler is most likely, not proven. His will gives his age as seventy-one in July 1681.

Anderson cites an inventory of his estate dated 19 March 1686/7, valued at £100 with no real estate, and dates his death to before that day. The will was proved three days later, on 22 March 1686/7. The transcript of the will notes: “An inventory does not exist.”

The birth years that compiled accounts give for the children, John’s 1644 among them, come from Austin; Anderson found none of them in a contemporary record. Some transcripts of the will give the daughter Philip’s name as Philippa.