Commemorative Biographical Record of Fairfield County, Connecticut

estate which has now been in the possession of the family for more than a century), and in his early years received only the educational oppor- tunities common to country youth of his day, his winters being devoted to study in the local schools, while the summer seasons were spent in farm work. His active mind was far from being satisfied with these advantages, and at the age of fourteen he determined to secure a liberal edu- cation. He learned the Greek alphabet in the haytield, and carried in his pocket a Latin gram- mar to study at intervals of his labor. For two or three terms he pursued his studies in the select school in his native town, and then went to the Connecticut Academy at Cheshire, where he prepared for college. In 1846 he entered Trinity College, Hartford, and in July, 1850, he was graduated from that institution, ranking among the six highest in his class. Their at- tainments in scholarship and in the requirements of the curriculum were so equal in merit that their respective college honors had to be deter- mined by lot — an eventuality rarely known in college history — the valedictory and salutatory thus falling to his classmates, while Mr. Sher- man took the first oration, which was deemed third in rank, though each one of the remarka- ble six was entitled to compete for the highest honors. While in college he became identified with the Psi Upsilon fraternity. In the last year of his college life Mr. Sherman began the study of law, and after his graduation he entered the State and National Law School at Ballston Spa, N. Y., under Prof. Fowler, where he continued two terms, and after passing a rigid examination, on motion before the full Bench of the supreme court, sitting at the capitol in Albany in 185 i, he was admitted to the Bar. Upon receiving his diploma he removed to New York, where he opened an office and commenced the practice of law. In 1852 he was called to Philadelphia on business, and thence went to Washington, where he became acquainted with the late Vice-Presi- dent King, then in ill health, and was invited to join him on his visit to Cuba, where Mr. King died. Mr. Sherman returned with his remains to Mobile, and they were interred at Selina, Ala. Soon afterward Mr. Sherman made a tour of the then slave-holding States, studying the workings of the institution in town and country. Returning to New York via Canada, in 1853, he resumed the practice of his profession in Wall street. In 1856 he brought an equity suit in Philadel- phia to set aside a decree of divorce which he maintained had been obtained by fraud and im- position practiced upon the court several years J. f',;:'l if!j ■■■■( J;,.;,,, l:'>'\U\'i- l>( • ■■•'-, ■ ■■,■: I e ■ ■A:.-.J FA, COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD, before in the noted case of Griswold 7's. Griswold, in which the eminent criminal lawyer, David Paul Brown, was his associate, and Mr. Cuyler, afterward mayor of Philadelphia, his opponent; the libellant Griswold being a Doctor of Divinity and an author and writer who had contracted a subsequent marriage with a lady in Maine, and his client, the respondent, a wealthy Jewess of Charleston, S. C. The social position of the parties to the suit attracted wide attention, and the skillful management of the case by Mr. Sherman throughout the protracted trial laid the foundation of his subsequent professional suc- cess. Notwithstanding his business cares, Mr. Sher- man has found time for work in literary and political lines. In 1869 he compiled and pub- lished at his own expense, from original and se- lected matter, a small volume of sacred poetry in the Spanish language, in metre, under the title of ' ' Hiinnos y Canticos, " which was adopted for use by the Spanish Church of Santiago, New York. More than ten years afterward selections taken from it were set to music and published, with other Spanish hymns, by the foreign department of the American Tract Society, under the same title, in a volume of two hundred and si.xteen pages, for use in Mexico and South America, and for the forty millions of the Spanish-speak- ing branch of the human family in the Old and New World. Mr. Sherman refused to copy- right his first edition of the work, believing that if it had merit it should be free to all. At the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the U. S. A. held at Baltimore in 1871, the Bishops of Connecticut, New York and Cali- fornia were appointed a committee to revise and correct the Spanish version of the Book of Com- mon Prayer, and subsequently Mr. Sherman was appointed, with the Rev. Joaquin de Palma, rector of the Church of Santiago, N. Y. , and Don Pablo Roura, of Cuba, in the order named, as acting sub-committee on said revision. In 1882 he published a work entitled ^'Travels in Cuba and the Republic of Santo Domingo," and in the same year he translated and published an address delivered by him in Spanish before the Dominican Congress during the celebration of the XXXIXth anniversary of the National Inde- pendence of that little Republic. In 1873 Mr. Sherman was elected judge of the Probate Court by the combination of both parties of his district, which was then, as now, strongly Democratic, and though he declined a renomination his name was again brought for- ward for the office. He refused a nomination for senator of the old Eleventh district when S. P. Glover, of Newtown, was elected in his place on the ticket, and he then stated in the Senatorial Convention, of which he was a member, that he desired to hold no office either in Church or State. In spite of this, however, the convention in 1874 nominated him for senator of the Eleventh, in his absence and without his consent, on a Friday preceding the following Monday's election, of which he had no knowledge until late on the following Saturday, thereby depriving him alike of the opportunity to withdraw in time to name his successor, or to devote any proper at- tention to the canvass; in consequence his com- petitor was elected. Mr. Sherman was a dele- gate to the Republican State Convention at New Haven in 1880, for the nomination of the Presi- dential electors, and to his well-remembered speech on offering an amendment to the resolu- tion proposing to bind the Connecticut dele- tion at Chicago to vote for particular parties therein named, he moved to add after the names mentioned in the resolution the words: "or any other man whom the National Convention at Chicago in their wisdom shall see fit to nomi- nate." His amendment was carried with loud cheers and applause, and it is believed that the consequent attitude taken by the Connecticut delegation largely contributed to the solution of the Presidential problem at Chicago. In i860 Mr. Shernian married a young Cuban lady, Dona Mercedes Montejo, daughter of a wealthy sugar planter. On the breaking out of the rebellion in Cuba, in 1868, her only brother. Col. Don Eduardo, fell at the head of his troops at .the siege of Las Tunas, and shortly afterward her excellent and venerable father, after having emancipated all his slaves, if not in consequence thereof, was cruelly assassinated in cold blood by Spanish hirelings, and his widow and children and grandchildren, having three times narrowly escaped from houses fired in the night-time and burned to the ground, fled to the woods for shelter, and lived in the forests of Cuba for months to escape the fury of war. On learning of their sad condition Mr. Sherman promptly sent for them to take refuge with him in this country, they having been stripped of their property by confiscation, pillage and fire. Mrs. Montejo, with her daughter and son-in-law and six grandchildren, and two elderly female ser- vants, in response, came to Brookfield in April, 1 87 1, where they remained over two years with him, the children attending school. Afterward, foe the purpose of receiving better educational facilities, he removed the family to Danbury, where they remained five years; three of the elder children, however, were sent to school in £ COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. New York City, and one of them is now a prac- ticing lawyer of high promise. About 1871, after twenty years of successful practice of his profession in New York City, Mr. Sherman re- tired to his native town, where he now resides, dividing his time between literary and profes- sional pursuits and the cultivation of his home- stead farm, which he has enlarged by purchase and has greatly improved. Living without os- tentation, and without boasting of either poverty or riches, Mr. Sherman is keenly alive to every public improvement, showing large-hearted lib- erality to every meritorious cause. All who know him intimately enjoy his cordial hospital- ity, and, in fact, no person, however lowly, is ever turned away hungry from his door. Of the strictest integrity, his word is his bond in all business transactions. Though of pronounced opinions on many subjects, he never pushes Ihem unduly upon the attention of others, and in society he is always the genial gentleman " to Ihe manner born." The Sherman family is one of the oldest in the locality, our subject tracing his descent from Samuel Sherman, who, in 1634, came to Amer- ica from Dedham, County of Essex, England, accompanied by a brother John and a tirst cousin also named John. He located at Stratford, Conn., and the others settled in Watertown, Mass. On the ship on which Samuel Sherman made the voyage was another passenger, Miss Sarah Mitchell, whom he married after the ar- rival in the New World. Their children were Samuel, Theophilus, Matthew, Edmond, John, Nathaniel, Benjamin and David. The posterity of each is traced as follows: