♂Stephen Sherman

Stephen Sherman was a son of Batchelder Sherman, named among his sons in the father’s will of 1828. 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.

Family and birth

Stephen was a son of Batchelder Sherman (1761–1828) and Waite Allen (1766–1850), who moved from Cambridge 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 second, born on 26 January 1784. A card of his own in the same file gives the same date and names the place as Cambridge, Washington County. It leaves his wife, his marriage and his death blank. No wife, marriage, death or burial is recorded for him.

Household and will

By 1820 Stephen headed a household of his own: the census page of that year lists a Stephen Sherman directly after Bachelor Sherman. Their father made his will “of New Berlin” on 2 January 1828, and it was proved on 15 October 1828. It names Stephen among his sons.

Sons

His own card names two sons, Harvey, born on 21 February 1806, and Henry. A genealogy of the Aylsworth family published in 1887 gives no parents for either, but it confirms the marriages the card records. The Aylsworth genealogy gives Harvey, a mason, a marriage on 25 October 1827 to Athalinda Beckwith Leach and a death on 21 February 1864, and places him at Norwich. Henry, a carpenter, married her younger sister Susanna Leach; the Aylsworth genealogy dates the marriage to 1845, though its dates conflict (see Notes), and places him at Norwich too. Harvey was twenty-one when his grandfather made the will of 1828. No record names the mother of either son.

Notes

The sons’ marriages

The Aylsworth genealogy gives Susanna Leach’s marriage to Henry as 9 May 1845 and her death as 5 April 1845, which cannot both be right, and the date of Henry’s marriage rests on that book and on the card alone.