♀Prudence Sherman

Prudence Sherman (born 1 April 1800, a compiled Sherman genealogy gives) was a New York woman, named by a 1913 card file as one of the sixteen children of Batchelder Sherman and Waite Allen, who was still single when her father made his will in 1828 and was living in her widowed mother’s household at New Berlin in 1850. She was the second great-grand-aunt of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the sister of Salena Sherman (1806–1842), Roger’s second great-grandmother.

Family and early years

Prudence was a daughter of Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828) and Waite Allen (1766–1850), who moved from Cambridge, in Washington County, New York, to New Berlin, in Chenango County. A Sherman family card file compiled in 1913 lists the couple’s sixteen children, born between 1783 and 1811, and puts her eleventh, born on 1 April 1800; a compiled Sherman directory gives the same date. The card gives no birthplace. Her father was still at Cambridge at the census of 1800, so she was probably born there.

Her father’s will

Her father made his will “of New Berlin” on 2 January 1828, and it was proved on 15 October 1828. It named Prudence among his four daughters, who were to share the rest of his personal estate equally after their mother’s death. Two of them, Salena and Luna, were already married; Prudence and her sister Waity were not, and the will left the use of his land to whichever of the two remained single.

Later years

The 1850 census lists Prudence Sherman at New Berlin, aged 50, in the household of Wait Sherman, aged 83, together with an Allen F. Sherman, aged 39. The names and ages fit her mother Waite and her brother Allen; a compiled Sherman genealogy gives her brother Allen’s birth as 1811, and a compiled Sherman directory likewise places her at New Berlin with her widowed mother. Waite died at New Berlin on 22 August 1850. No marriage, death or burial is recorded for Prudence, and each record that names her gives her the surname Sherman.