"Had Judge Sherman lived, higher and broader spheres of public usefulness would have opened before him. There is no doubt whatever that the same spontaneity of opinion that placed him upon the supreme bench would have again united, when the vacancy happened, to have sent him to the Senate of the United States, and those who know him knew full well that his first prepared public utterance in that chamber upon any pending matter of national importance would have secured to him a brilliant national name. This is no fancy penciling. It was conviction with his contemporaries, and it would have been the record of history had he lived. As it is, he has left to his children the heritage of his spotless public reputation—of his loved and honored name.
"This fragmentary sketch would be more incomplete did I not mention that Judge Sherman was a zealous and prominent member of the Masonic fraternity, and that he filled its highest offices of honor in the several grand bodies of Ohio."
General Reese, the author of this sketch, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., on the 5th of August, 1804. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, studied law and was admitted to practice in Philadelphia. He then came to Ohio and was admitted to the bar in Cincinnati and soon after settled in Lancaster. In 1829, soon after the death of my father, he married my eldest sister, Mary Elizabeth. He did not long pursue his profession but became a merchant. He was prominent as a member of the board of public works. In old militia times he was in command of the forces of the state as its only major-general. He was grand master of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Ohio for a series of years, and at the same time held high rank in the Grand Lodge of the United States. He was a handsome and accomplished gentleman, of pleasing manners and liberal to a fault. He died on the 17th of December, 1883, at Lancaster, in his eightieth year.
Of my mother I can scarcely write without emotion, though she died more than forty years ago. Her maiden name was Mary Hoyt. She was a member of a family, mostly merchants and sailors, who had lived in Norwalk, Connecticut, since its first settlement. At the period of the American Revolution the Hoyt family, composed of several brothers, was divided in their allegiance, some as Tories, some as Whigs. My mother's grandfather was a Whig. It is a tradition in the family that one of the Tory brothers pointed out the house of his brother, at the capture of Norwalk by the British and Tories, as the nest of a rebel, and it was burned to the ground. In this it shared the fate of the greater part of the town. The Tories of the family went to St. Johns, but years after the war was over they and their descendants returned to Connecticut and New York, and many of them became prominent and respected citizens. Isaac Hoyt, my grandfather, was a prominent citizen of Norwalk, possessing considerable wealth for those days.
My mother was carefully educated at the then famous female seminary at Poughkeepsie, New York. I remember the many embroidered pictures, made with the needle and silk thread by the handicraft of my mother, as a school girl, carefully framed, that decorated the old house in Lancaster. The women of that day were trained more for the culture and ornament of the house, more to knit stockings and weave home spun than to make speeches on woman's rights. Soon after her graduation she married Charles Robert Sherman, as before stated, and their lives were blended. She sometimes rode with him when on the circuit, and always on horseback. It was an adage in the family, even to her grandchildren, that she was always ready for a visit. I never knew her to scold, much less to strike, her children. She was our sure refuge against grandmother, between whom and my mother there was, however, the warmest affection. When Aunt Elizabeth married Mr. Parker, grandmother followed her daughter to their home in Mansfield.
When my mother, by the death of her husband, was left a widow with eleven children and spare means of support, she received the sympathy of all her neighbors and the kindly encouragement of everyone in Lancaster. As her children scattered her resources increased, so that after one year of widowhood she was quite independent. Like Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield she was "passing rich" on four hundred dollars a year. Soon the houses of her children were open to her, but she clung to Lancaster until all her children had taken flight, when, in the summer of 1844, she accepted the invitation of her sons to make her home in Mansfield and removed there. She had there her house and home. Her two youngest daughters, and the writer of this, were her family, but in a very brief period all around her were married. She still continued to occupy her home, and always with some of her numerous grandchildren as guests. She often visited her children, and her coming was always regarded by them as a favor conferred by her. And so her tranquil life flowed on until 1852, when she attended the state fair at Cleveland and contracted a bad cold. She returned to Mansfield only to die on the 23rd day of September, 1852, at the residence of her daughter, Mrs. Bartley.
Before closing this sketch of my ancestors, it seems proper that I refer to their religious beliefs and modes of worship. In England they were classed as Puritans, and were members of the Presbyterian church. In Connecticut they followed the doctrine and faith of the Congregational church of Anthony Stoddard. Daniel Sherman had his father were deacons of the congregation of Mr. Stoddard, and his granddaughter, the wife of Taylor Sherman, carried her faith and practice into her family, and maintained to her death the strict morals, and close observance of the Sabbath day, that was the established rule and practice of the Connecticut Congregationalist.
My mother's family, the Hoyts, were, with scarcely an exception, members of the Episcopal church. My mother was reared in that faith and practice from infancy, and was a member of that church at the time of her marriage. When she emigrated to Lancaster she found there no church of that denomination, and, therefore, joined the Presbyterian church under the pastorage of Rev. John Wright, who baptized all her children. At a later period, perhaps about 1840, when an Episcopal church was established in Lancaster, she resumed her attendance and worship in that church. When she removed to Mansfield she attended the Episcopal church at that place, partook of its sacraments and usages, and died in that faith and worship. All her living children and their families recognized and supported the Episcopal church as their church, except the children of General Sherman, who followed their mother and her maternal ancestors in the faith and worship of the Catholic church.
The writer of this has a firm belief in the Bible as the only creed of religious faith and duty, and willingly accords to every human being the right to choose his form of worship according to his judgment, but in case of doubt it is best to follow the teachings of his mother.
With this, the sketch of my ancestors closes. Many will think it is not part of my life, and that I have given too much space and importance to it. If so, I hope they will pass it over without reading. Each individual life is molded by one's ancestry, by the incidents of his childhood, the training he receives in the family and the school and the conditions and surroundings of his early days. The boy is father to the man. It is difficult for one in advanced age to recall or to measure the influence of each of these in forming his character, but a statement of them is a necessary preface to a history of his later life. My information as to my ancestry is chiefly derived from the admirable local histories of Connecticut, and, especially, from "Cothron's History of Ancient Woodbury," "Hutchinson's History of Connecticut," and the local records and traditions of Essex and Sussex counties in England.