Since today, Thursday, 17 Sept. 2026, marks 239 years since the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, my own thoughts today, in this year of the American Semiquincentennial, recall a somewhat remote relationship that I personally have with that great moment in U.S. history. It is a relationship that connects not only to the signing of the Constitution, but to the signing of all four of the United States of America’s foundational documents.
The relationship to which I refer is kinship to one of America’s Founding Fathers: Roger Sherman (1721-1793), often called Roger Sherman the Signer. His greatest claim to fame, and what earned him the monicker of “the Signer,” is that he is the only Founding Father to have signed all four of America’s great state papers: the Continental Association of 1774, the Declaration of Independence of 1776, the Articles of Confederation of 1777, and the U.S. Constitution of 1787. In addition, Roger Sherman also signed the 1774 Petition to the King.
Roger Sherman was born 19 April 1721 in Newton, Massachusetts. He belonged to the great family of the Shermans of Dedham in County Essex, England, who all descend from Henry Sherman of Dedham (1511-1590), several of whose descendants came to North America in the 1630s. The Shermans of Dedham have traditionally been considered to be a cadet branch of Shermans of Yaxley in Norfolk, England, though that tradition cannot be substantiated. “Sherman” is an occupational surname, originally “Shearman,” because the Shermans were clothiers. This particular Sherman family has since grown very large, with a vast number of living descendants in the United States and Canada. The most prominent members of the family include Roger the Signer as well as Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) and Gen. Sherman’s brother U.S. Senator John Sherman (1823-1900), after whom the Sherman Antitrust Act is named — Gen. Sherman and Sen. Sherman were eighth in descent from Edmund Sherman, a younger son of Henry Sherman of Dedham. Another prominent member of this Sherman family was James Schoolcraft Sherman (1855-1912), 27th Vice President of the United States (1909-1912) under President William Howard Taft. A considerably less prominent and significant member of the family is . . . the present writer.
In 1743, Roger Sherman and his family moved from Massachusetts to Connecticut. He became the first mayor of New Haven, Connecticut, served as a member of the Continental Congress, was one of the Committee of Five who drafted the Declaration of Independence, and served as U.S. Senator for Connecticut. The Committee of Five, including Roger Sherman, is depicted on the pediment of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. He married twice and had a total of 15 children, with 12 of them surviving to adulthood. He died in his sleep in New Haven on 23 July 1793 about two months after reportedly contracting typhoid fever. He was buried initially in New Haven Green, but when that cemetery was relocated, his remains were reinterred in the Grove Street Burial Ground in New Haven. The town of Sherman, Connecticut, is named after him.
Roger Sherman was sixth in descent from Henry Sherman of Dedham, England. His great-great-grandfather John Sherman had an older brother named Samuel Sherman, whose son Philip left Essex, England, and settled in Massachusetts about 1633. Vice President James Schoolcraft Sherman was seventh in descent from Philip the colonist, being descended from Philip’s son Benjamin. Meanwhile, Philip’s older son Edmond Sherman (born in 1641) had a great-granddaughter named Lucy Sherman (1768-1818) who married in 1788 in Middleboro, Massachusetts, to Job Shaw. Job and Lucy later left Massachusetts and lived for several years in Vermont, finally settling permanently in Western New York State.
The Sherman surname was perpetuated in the descendants of Job and Lucy (Sherman) Shaw as a popular given name and a surname. In particular, they named their youngest son Manly Sherman Shaw (1811-1891), usually known simply as Sherman Shaw, or among his neighbors as “Uncle Sherman.” He left New York in 1837 and settled in Northern Illinois. His grandson was Sherman Linn Shaw I, who in turn named his youngest son Sherman Linn Shaw II (or Jr.).
And that is how the story gets all the way from Roger Sherman the Signer to the Pekin Public Library’s local history program coordinator, for Sherman Linn Shaw II was my maternal grandfather. It is a total of 17 “steps” from Roger the Signer to myself. Thus, I and my brothers are fourth cousins seven times removed of Roger Sherman the Signer, eighth cousins four times removed of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and his brothers, and sixth cousins three times removed of Vice President James Schoolcraft Sherman.
These are just a few so many, many threads in the intricate tapestry that has been woven from the lives and experiences of Americans over the course of 250 years and then some. Indeed, any American who begins to trace the threads of his own family will find that he or she has the same kind of ties back to the world-changing events of the American Founding. American history is our common heritage handed down from all those notables who came before us, and from those who lived ordinary, unpresuming lives in obscurity. All that we have and all that we are is thanks to them.
