♂Philip Sherman III

Philip Sherman (September 1675 – 29 February 1740) was a farmer of Dartmouth, in Bristol County, Massachusetts, whose will of 1737 names his wife Hannah and four surviving sons. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Jabez Sherman (1700–1774).

Early life

Philip was a son of John Sherman (1644–1734) and Sarah Spooner (born 1653). A Sherman family card file compiled in 1913 places him as a grandson of Philip Sherman of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, through his father John. He was born in September 1675 at Dartmouth, according to the card file; the 16 January 1676 Portsmouth birth often given for him belongs to another Philip Sherman (see Notes). The town’s clerks spelled the family name both Sherman and Shearman.

Parents and siblings

Philip’s father made his will on 19 June 1720, and it was proved in May 1734. It names his wife Sarah and his son Philip, whom it appoints one of its executors, and it also names his sons Isaac, Ephraim and Timothy and his daughters Abigail Chase and Hannah Akin. The will does not say who Philip’s mother was, but Sarah Spooner is the only wife recorded for John in these years, so she is most likely his mother.

The Dartmouth register records the births of six more of John’s children: Joshua in September 1678, Abigail in September 1680, Hannah in July 1682, Isaac in October 1684, Ephraim in January 1689 and Timothy in July 1691. The register names no mother for any of them. With Philip, they make seven children born over sixteen years. Joshua is not mentioned in the will, and the records do not show whether he had died before 1720. Timothy shared the executorship with Philip.

Marriage and family

He married Hannah Smith (1681–1744) by 1699, though her maiden name is uncertain (see Notes). A compilation of New England marriages before 1700 gives the marriage only as having taken place before that year, and the Dartmouth marriage records do not contain it. The card file lists seven children born at Dartmouth between 1699 and 1713: John, Jabez, Stephen, Henry, Ichabod, Deborah and Abraham. The Dartmouth register independently records the births of John, Jabez, Stephen and Henry as sons of Philip, and of Deborah as his daughter. At Abraham’s marriage in 1750 it calls him a son of Philip and Hannah. According to the card file, Henry and Deborah both died in May 1729, four days apart, when they were about twenty-three and eighteen. The records do not explain their deaths. The eldest son, John, also died before his father, leaving a widow, Margaret, and a son named John.

Will and death

The card file describes Philip as a farmer at Dartmouth. On 13 December 1712 he bought part of a Dartmouth share of upland and meadow from Judah Smith for six pounds ten shillings; the deed was entered on 20 May 1713. He made his will on 16 May 1737. It left bequests to his wife Hannah, to his sons Stephen, Jabez, Ichabod and Abraham, to his grandson John, son of his late son John, and to Margaret, John’s widow, and it named Stephen as executor. In it Philip calls Hannah the mother of Stephen and Abraham and names Jabez as his son. Philip died at Dartmouth on 29 February 1740, and the will was proved at Taunton on 15 April 1740. Hannah survived him by four years and died at Dartmouth in September 1744.

A modern granite marker at Dartmouth, cut “Shearman”, bears both their names with the years 1675–1740 and 1681–1744, and gives Hannah’s maiden name as Smith. The second line of the stone reads “Cenotaph”, which means that it is a memorial and not a grave. Such memorials are often raised in the ground a family used, but no record of Philip’s burial has been found.

Notes

Another Philip Sherman, of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, was born within months of this one, and later compilations have sometimes merged the two. The 1913 card file gives each man a separate card. It dates the birth of the Portsmouth man to 16 January 1676 at Portsmouth, and it dates this Philip’s birth to September 1675 at Dartmouth. The Portsmouth Philip married Mary Anthony on 12 April 1699 and, after her death, the widow Hannah (Wilcox) Clark in 1717. No son named Jabez appears among his children. Some published accounts give the Anthony marriage date to this Philip, and the modern marker’s “1675” agrees with the card file’s year for him.

Hannah’s maiden name is uncertain. The marriage compilation offers Wilcox only as a doubtful guess, and it also suggests a different woman, Sarah Jenney. Wilcox seems to be the surname of the Portsmouth Philip’s second wife. The card file names this Philip’s wife as Hannah Smith, a daughter of John Smith, on the authority of an old family record kept by the family of their grandson Captain David Sherman. The modern marker agrees with it.