♀Ruth Shearman

Ruth Shearman was a daughter of Henry Shearman (1730–1805) and Ruth Akin (1731–1821) of Cambridge, in Washington County, New York. She was the third great-grand-aunt of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the sister of Roger’s third great-grandfather Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828).

Marriage

A FamilySearch index of New York church records gives her marriage to Benjamin Cook on 28 October 1779. It indexes the bride as “Ruth Charman” and the place only as New York, and it names neither a church nor her parents. The tree records no children for her, and her dates of birth and death are not known.

In her parents’ wills

Mother and daughter shared a first name, and both of the parents’ wills know the daughter by the surname Cook, Ruth Cook. When Henry made his will at Cambridge on 10 July 1801, he left “my daughter Ruth Cook” one third of his household furniture, to come to her when her mother died. He also named her, with her sister Deborah Duers, among those who were to share the residue of his estate with his widow and his four sons.

Ruth Akin made her own will on 26 June 1817. To her daughter Ruth Cook she left a bed with its bedstead and furniture, a crane with its hooks and trammels, and a looking glass. The remainder of the estate, after the funeral charges and “a decent gravestone”, was to be divided equally between Ruth and Deborah. Neither will says where Ruth Cook lived.

Notes

The name in the index

The index spells the bride’s surname “Charman”. It does not name her parents, so the marriage is tied to this family only through the name Ruth and her husband’s surname, which the two wills give.

A compiled family tree

A family tree on FamilySearch lists a Ruth Sherman (1750–1826) as the wife of Benjamin Cook (1757–1817), places their marriage at Schaghticoke, in Rensselaer County, New York, and gives them twelve children. The index names no town, and nothing in the wills confirms the match, so none of those details has been taken into this account.