♂Reuben Sherman

Reuben Sherman (1796 – 1891) was a son of Batchelder Sherman and Waite Allen who stayed on at New Berlin, in Chenango County, New York, and was named executor of his father’s will. A Find a Grave index gives his birth as 17 November 1796 and his death as 6 March 1891, which would make him ninety-four. He was the second great-grand-uncle of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the brother of Salena Sherman (1806–1842), Roger’s second great-grandmother.

Early life

Reuben was a son 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 him ninth, born on 17 November 1796. A Find a Grave index gives the same date. By 1818 he appeared with his father on a Chenango County land assessment.

A Gorham family history published in 1955 says that Reuben built a log house and sawmill near Chenango Lake in 1812, when he would have been fifteen. The card file instead credits his father with building a sawmill on an outlet of the lake in 1815, which some of the family ran for fifty years. The two accounts may describe the same mill or two, and the records do not say which Sherman built it.

Marriage and farm

On 1 December 1822 Reuben married Betsey Gorham (1795–1875), according to the Gorham history, which draws on the family Bible that Betsey kept; the card file also names her as his wife but gives no date. The Gorham history gives her birth as 5 March 1795 in Connecticut, a daughter of Frederick Gorham and Lois White, and her death at New Berlin on 7 February 1875. The history gives the couple five children: Mariamni, Ezra, Alexia, Frederick and Orville.

In 1825, the history says, Reuben bought about 250 acres for $2,000, and a reminiscence by F. S. Ainsworth likewise has him buying a lot in May of that year. The history says the farm and mill were sold in 1866 to their son Ezra, and the couple moved to a small place on Dilley Hill, next to the former farm of Betsey’s father.

His father’s will

Their father made his will “of New Berlin” on 2 January 1828, and it was proved on 15 October 1828. It named Reuben executor, with his mother as executrix, and left him one dollar, as it did several of his brothers; the rest of the personal estate went to his mother for her lifetime and then to his four sisters. His father died on 26 February 1828.

Death

A Find a Grave index places his death in March 1891 and his burial at New Berlin. The index gives the date as 6 March and the place as Norwich, while the Gorham history gives 5 March, “in his 95th year”, at New Berlin.

Notes

Birthplace

A Find a Grave index gives his birthplace as Chenango, a county not formed until 1798. A compiled Sherman directory (1991) gives Cambridge, where the family was living when he was born.

Death

The index and the Gorham history differ by a day and by a town (Norwich or New Berlin). Neither is a primary record, and both agree on the year and on his age of ninety-four.