'Roger Sherman' (
April 19 (O.S.),
April 30 (N.S.),
1721 –
July 23,
1793) was an early American lawyer and politician. He served as the first mayor of
New Haven, Connecticut and served on the
Committee of Five that drafted the
American Declaration of Independence.
He was the only person to sign all four great state papers of the United States: the
Articles of Association, the
Declaration of Independence, the
Articles of Confederation and the
United States Constitution.
[1] Thomas Jefferson once said of him: "That is Mr. Sherman of Connecticut, a man who has never said a foolish thing in his life."
Early life
Sherman was born in
Newton, Massachusetts and when he was three years old his family moved to
Stoughton, Massachusetts, a town located seventeen miles south of Boston. Sherman's formal education did not extend beyond grammar school and his early career was spent as a shoedesigner but he was blessed with the combination of an active thirst for learning, and access to a good library owned by his father as well as a
Harvard educated parish minister, Rev. Samuel Dunbar, who took him under his wing.
In
1743, after his father's death, he moved (on foot) with his mother and siblings to
New Milford, Connecticut, where in partnership with his brother, he opened the town's first store. He very quickly immersed himself in civil and religious affairs, rapidly becoming one of the town's leading citizens and eventually town clerk of New Milford. Due to his mathematical skill he became county surveyor of
New Haven County in
1745, and began providing astronomical calculations for almanacs in
1748, publishing a popular Almanac himself from
1750 to
1761.
In the opinion of Sherman's descendants he was a Freemason. They gave his Masonic apron to
Yale University, which is now part of its historical collection. His membership is based only on tradition and is not supported by any proof.
[2]
Legal, political career
Roger Sherman
Despite the fact that he had no formal legal training, Sherman was urged to read for the bar by a local lawyer and was admitted to the Bar of
Litchfield, Connecticut in
1754, and chosen to represent New Milford in the
Connecticut General Assembly from
1755 to
1758 and from
1760 to
1761. In
1766 he was elected to the Upper House of the Connecticut General Assembly, where he served until
1785.
He was appointed justice of the peace in
1762, judge of the court of common pleas in
1765, and justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut from
1766 to
1789, when he left to become a member of the
United States Congress. He was also appointed treasurer of
Yale College, and awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree. He was a professor of religion for many years, and engaged in lengthy correspondences with some of the greatest theologians of the time.
In
1783 he and
Richard Law were appointed to massively revise the confused and archaic Connecticut statutes, which they accomplished with great success. In
1784 he was elected
Mayor of New Haven, which office he held until his death. He is especially notable for being one of just two people to sign all three of these important American documents, the
United States Declaration of Independence, the
Articles of Confederation, and the
United States Constitution. The other was
Robert Morris.
Continental Congress
At the start of the
Revolutionary War in
1775 Sherman was appointed to the Connecticut Governor's Council of Safety and also commissary to the Connecticut Troops. He was elected to the
Continental Congress in
1774 and served very actively throughout the War, earning high esteem in the eyes of his fellow delegates and serving on the
Committee of Five that drafted the
Declaration of Independence.
Constitutional Convention
During the
Constitutional Convention of
1787, summoned into existence to amend the
Articles of Confederation, Sherman offered what came to be called the
Great Compromise. In this plan, the people would be represented in the house of the legislature, called the House of Representatives. The states would be represented in another house called the Senate. Each state had a representative for every 30,000 people. In the upper house, on the other hand, each state was guaranteed two senators, no matter their size.
Family
He married
Elizabeth Hartwell of Stoughton, Massachusetts, in
1749 and had seven children; after her death (from a childbirth) he married a second time in
1760, to
Rebecca Minot Prescott of
Danvers, Massachusetts, and had another eight children. He was grandfather of
Roger Sherman Baldwin,
William Maxwell Evarts,
George Frisbie Hoar,
Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, and
Sherman Day.
He was a first cousin twice removed of
Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin. Sherman's mother Mehitable Wellington and Whitney's great-grandmother Elizabeth Wellington were siblings. It has been suggested that both of them were descended from
Edward I of England.
Watergate-era proscecutor
Archibald Cox, famous for his firing during the
Saturday Night Massacre was a direct descendant of Roger Sherman.
The town of
Sherman, Connecticut is named in honor of Roger Sherman.
Sherman Avenue in central
Madison, Wisconsin is named in honor of Roger Sherman. Most of the main streets in Downtown Madison are named after signers of the United States Constitution. Naturally, there is also a Sherman Avenue in New Haven, which extends into neighboring Hamden.
He is buried in the
Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, and his grave is the center of the city's
4th of July celebrations.
The official name of the policy debate team at
Western Connecticut State University is the "
Roger Sherman Debate Society".
See also
★ Dictionary of American Biography
★ Boardman, Roger Sherman, ''Roger Sherman, Signer and Statesman,'' 1938. Reprint. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.
★ Boutell, Lewis Henry, ''The Life of Roger Sherman,'' Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1896.
★ Boyd, Julian P., “Roger Sherman: Portrait of a Cordwainer Statesman.” New England Quarterly 5 (1932): 221-36.
★ Collier, Christopher; ''Roger Sherman’s Connecticut: Yankee Politics and the American Revolution,'' Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971.
★ Gerbr, Scott D., "Roger Sherman and the Bill of Rights." Polity 28 (Summer 1996): 521-540.
★
Hoar, George Frisbie, ''The Connecticut Compromise. Roger Sherman, the Author of the Plan of Equal Representation of the States in the Senate, and Representation of the People in Proportion to Numbers in the House,'' Worcester, MA: Press of C. Hamilton, 1903.
★ Rommel, John G., ''Connecticut’s Yankee Patriot: Roger Sherman,'' Hartford: American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut, 1980.
Notes
1. Roger Sherman Architect of the Capitol. Retrieved February 14, 2007.
2. William R. Denslow, Harry S. Truman: ''10,000 Famous Freemasons from K to Z, Part Two''. Kessinger Publishing, ISBN 1-4179-7579-2.
External links
★
Appleton's Biography edited by Stanley L. Klos
★
From Rev. Charles A. Goodrich, "Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence", 1856
★
From Roger Sherman's United States Congress Biography
★
History of Sherman's boyhood home of Stoughton, Massachusetts
★
Roger Sherman Find A Grave
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
