♂Samuel Sherman

Samuel Sherman (baptized 11 January 1572/3 – died before 2 March 1615/16) was a landholder of Dedham and Ardleigh, in Essex, England, the son of a Dedham clothier, who died in his early forties and left his wife Philippa Ward to bring up their five children. He was most likely the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Philip Sherman (died 1687).

Dedham

Samuel was baptized at Dedham on 11 January 1572/3, a son of Henry Sherman, a clothier, and his wife Susan Lawrance. At a sitting of the Dedham manor court in October 1599, his father and George Cole surrendered to his use a third part of Pepers field, a parcel of three acres. In 1609 he was made overseer of the will of his brother-in-law Simon Fenn, a Dedham clothier.

Samuel and Philippa’s children were baptized at Dedham: Mary in 1599, Henry in 1601 and probably Samuel the same year, Martha in 1604, Sarah in 1606 and Philip on 5 February 1610/1. Sarah was buried there in December 1612.

In the late summer of 1610 Samuel lost both his parents within a few weeks. His father, buried at Dedham on 28 August, left Samuel and his brother Henry to sell eight acres in the Hallfield for the benefit of his grandchildren. His mother, in a will of 31 August, left Samuel the six silver spoons “wch my husband gave mee marked wth E and S” and the featherbed in the parlour, and left his daughter Mary a joined chest.

Ardleigh and his will

By the end of his life Samuel had left the house at Dedham, once John Wrench’s, “where I late dwelt”, for Ardleigh, and his will calls him “Samuel Sherman of Dedham and Ardley”. Samuel made his will on 20 January 1615/16. He left Philippa his lands in Dedham for her lifetime and all his goods, “the better to inabie her … to pay my debts, my Legacies and to bringe upp my said children in good & decent manner”, and named her and John Uppcheire of Dedham, “my brother in law”, as his executors.

After Philippa’s death the house where he had lived was to go to the sons Samuel and Philip, with closes of land, and Henry was to have Hardinges, a house held of the manor. Mary and Martha were each to have forty pounds at twenty-one. If Philippa died before the children were twenty-two, Uppcheire was to hold their lands and bring them up. Samuel gave twenty shillings to the poor of Ardleigh and twenty to “Mr. John Rogers of Dedham”, most likely the Puritan preacher John Rogers^W, lecturer at Dedham, to whom Samuel’s father had left eight pounds. He signed the will with his mark. The will was proved on 2 March 1615/16, so he died, probably at Ardleigh, within six weeks of making it.

His sons

Two of the sons later crossed to New England. Robert Charles Anderson’s study of the Great Migration identifies Philip as the settler Philip Sherman^W, who came to Massachusetts in 1633 and helped to found Portsmouth, Rhode Island; Samuel is said to have died at Boston about 1643.

Notes

Baptism and death

The baptism of “Samuell”, son of Henry Sharman, on 11 January 1572/3 stands in the Dedham parish register as transcribed for FreeREG. Thomas Townsend Sherman’s Sherman Genealogy (1920) prints the same day as 11 January 1573, in the modern reckoning of the year. The same book says he died at Ardleigh in 1615, which in the old reckoning, when the year began on 25 March, falls in the weeks between his will of 20 January 1615/16 and its proof on 2 March 1615/16. The place rests on that book alone.

The Dedham register as transcribed for FreeREG records the burial of Henry Sharman “the elder” on 28 August 1610 and, on 13 September 1610, that of “his wife”. Susan Sherman’s will, dated 31 August 1610, is printed as proved at Chelmsford on 12 September 1610, a day before that burial date; the grant made that day already calls her “jam etiam defuncta”, now also dead.

His wife

Samuel’s will names his wife only as “Philipp”, with no surname, in “Philipp my well beloved wife”. Wood, in New England Historical and Genealogical Register 167 (2013): 35–54, gives her as “Phillipp Ward, born say 1575”, a daughter of Lancelot and Joan Ward of Wethersfield, Essex, and dates the marriage to about 1598; he says the original documents spell her name Phillipp rather than Philippa (167:47). Wood’s case rests on two wills. The will of Robert Ward of Lexden, dated 8 January 1616/7, names their father Lancelot as deceased and has a witness, “Phellep Shearman”, whom Wood calls almost certainly the testator’s sister. The 1652 will of John Ward of Ipswich, Massachusetts, names “cousin Samuel Sherman of Boston, deceased and cousin Philip Sherman of Rhode Island”. No record names her father outright, so the surname and parentage given here are Wood’s argument.

The wills

The wills of Samuel and of both his parents are known from printed texts: abstracts and full texts in Sherman Genealogy (1920) and a fuller copy of Samuel’s will in Bertha Stratton’s Transatlantic Shermans (1969). Samuel’s will was proved in the Archdeaconry of Colchester. The 1920 abstract gives the daughters’ legacies as due “when 20 years”; the fuller 1969 text gives forty pounds each at “one & twenty”. The quoted words follow the 1969 text, spelling and all. The 1599 manor-court entry and the overseership of Simon Fenn’s will are given in Sherman Genealogy, which also names Samuel in the 1590 will of his grandfather Henry Sherman of Colchester.

The children

The baptisms of Henry (20 November 1601) and Philip (5 February 1610/1) appear in the Dedham register as transcribed for FreeREG; the other dates are printed in Sherman Genealogy. The register also has, on 20 October 1601, a son of Samuel with no first name, an entry that is crossed out. Sherman Genealogy takes it for the son Samuel, who is named in his father’s will; the FreeREG transcriber suggests it may be a slip for Henry, baptized a month later. Sherman Genealogy gives Philip’s baptism as 15 February 1611 and Transatlantic Shermans as 15 February 1610/11; the FreeREG transcript and Anderson give 5 February 1610/1.

Philip of Portsmouth

Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins joins the Dedham baby of 1610/1 to the Portsmouth settler. Philip’s own will of 1681 calls him “aged seventy-one years”, which fits, and Samuel Sherman of Boston, whom Anderson calls Philip’s brother, named a son Philip in 1637. The descent from Philip runs through his son John Sherman (1644–1734), a link that is itself probable rather than proven.