♀Ruth Akin

Ruth Akin (28 December 1731 – before 5 March 1821) was a Dartmouth, Massachusetts woman who married Henry Shearman at seventeen, moved with him to Cambridge, in Washington County, New York, after the Revolution, and outlived him by some fifteen years. In her own will she set aside part of her estate for “a decent gravestone” for herself. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828).

Early life and marriage

Ruth was born at Dartmouth, in Bristol County, Massachusetts, on 28 December 1731. The town’s birth register records her as “Ruth, d. James and Amie”, a daughter of James Akin (1706–1804) and Amy Fish (1705–after 1745). Her father’s will of 1798 names her as his daughter, Ruth Shearman, wife of Henry Shearman, and leaves her one silver dollar. Through her mother she was a granddaughter of Preserved Fish and Ruth Cook of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, which made her a first cousin of Elizabeth Fish, the mother of Waite Allen. Her mother died after July 1745 and before March 1762, and her father married again on 26 October 1748, to Ruth Sanford.

On 17 September 1749, less than a year later, Ruth married Henry Shearman (1730–1805) at Dartmouth; the town record calls them “both of D.” Their children grew up at Dartmouth, but the town did not record their births. Between them, the couple’s two wills name seven children: four sons, Shubal, John, Henry and Batchelder, and three daughters, Almy, Deborah and Ruth. Deborah married David Dewers at Dartmouth in December 1770, and Ruth married Benjamin Cook in New York in 1779.

Cambridge

In the years after the Revolution the family moved west to Cambridge, in what became Washington County, New York, where the 1790 census found Henry and three of their sons as four neighboring households. When Henry made his will in July 1801 he left “my well beloved wife Ruth Shearman” the use and profit of his whole estate in Cambridge for as long as she remained his widow. His sons Shubal, John and Batchelder were to share the land, but only “when their mother shall cease to be my widow”, and after her death they were to keep their sister Deborah Duers in firewood, food and a cow. Henry died on 22 January 1805.

As his widow Ruth kept her own household. The census of 1810 lists “Ruth Sherman” as its head at Cambridge, with the household of her grandson William Duers next door and her son Batchelder’s beyond it, so that mother, daughter’s family and son lived in three houses in a row.

Her will

Ruth made her will at Cambridge on 26 June 1817, describing herself as “widow of Henry Shearman late of the town aforesaid deceased”. She left her daughter Deborah Duers six silver teaspoons, flat irons, a crane with its hooks and trammels, iron and brass kettles, a looking glass, a tea kettle, pewter porringers and plates, and a white bed curtain. Her daughter Ruth Cook received her bed with its bedstead and furniture, a set of calico bed curtains, another crane and a looking glass. Her granddaughter Charity Parker, the only grandchild named, was left “one Gold necklace”. Her four sons, who had already taken the Cambridge land under their father’s will, were left one dollar each.

Whatever remained, “after paying the funeral charges & procuring a decent gravestone”, was to be divided equally between her two daughters. The cost of her stone was therefore paid out of her own estate, before her daughters received their shares. She named William Hall and Oliver Shearman, Esquire, of Cambridge, as her executors. Oliver Shearman was not one of her sons, and the will does not say how he was related to her. The witnesses were Stephen Mosher, Valentine Randell and a woman of the Shearman family whose first name the clerk copied as “Egnee”.

Ruth died at Cambridge, and on 5 March 1821 Stephen Mosher appeared before Calvin Smith, the surrogate, at Easton and swore that he had seen her sign the will. Oliver Shearman took the executor’s oath the same day. She was buried at Greenwich, the neighboring town. A memorial website places her grave in the Bigelow Farm Cemetery there, also known as the Sherman Cemetery, with those of her husband Henry and her son Shubal.

Notes

The exact date of her death is not known. A memorial website gives 5 March 1821, at the age of 89, but that is the day her will was proved, after the surrogate had been applied to and a witness brought before him, so it is very unlikely also to be the day she died. The will itself shows that she was alive in June 1817 and dead by 5 March 1821. A family record compiled in 1994 and a FamilySearch profile both give 28 March 1820, which falls within those limits but has not been found in any contemporary record. Photographs of her gravestone taken in 1981 are too indistinct to read. A Sons of the American Revolution application and some later family trees give 28 March 1825, which the probate of her will rules out.

Her daughter Almy is named in Henry’s will of 1801, as “Almy Peters that was”, but not in Ruth’s own will of 1817. The records do not explain the omission, or say whose daughter Charity Parker was.

Some indexes of the Dartmouth records, and a cross-reference in the printed Dartmouth vital records, give the bride at the 1749 marriage as Ruth Sanford. Her birth and parentage are recorded under Akin in the same printed volume. Ruth Sanford was her father’s second wife, who had married into the Akin family at Dartmouth the year before, and the two women have been confused in several compilations.