Roger Sherman

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Roger Sherman

Roger Sherman (April 19 (O.S.), April 30 (N.S.), 1721 – July 23, 1793), was the only person to have signed all four basic documents of American sovereignty: the Continental Association of 1774, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. He also wrote "A CAVEA T AGAINST INJUSTICE or An Inquiry into the Evils of a Fluctuating Medium of Exchange."Thomas Jefferson is quoted as having said about him, "That is Mr. Sherman of Connecticut, a man who never said a foolish thing in his life."

Early life

He was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and when he was two years old his family moved to Stoughton, Massachusetts, then the western frontier of America, where his father was able to carve a farm out of the wilderness. Sherman had only informal schooling past grammar school and began his career as a shoemaker, but 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 Danbar, 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.

Legal, political career

Although he had no formal legal training, he was urged to read for the bar by a local lawyer and was accepted 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.

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, where he served very actively throughout the War, earning high esteem in the eyes of his fellow delegates and serving on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence.


United States Congress

Sherman was elected as a Representative to the First United States Congress, and then served as a Senator from 1791 until his death of typhoid in 1793 in New Haven, Connecticut at the age of seventy-two. He is interred in Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, near the Yale campus.

Family

Sherman married Elizabeth Hartwell of Stoughton in 1749 and had seven children; after her death 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, George Frisbie Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Sherman Day, Andrew Taylor Sherman and William Maxwell Evarts.

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.

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.


Preceded by:
William Samuel Johnson
 Class 3 Senators of Connecticut
1791-1793 		Succeeded by:
Stephen M. Mitchell
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