My Genealogy Hound

JUDGE DANIEL SHERMAN. One who has held with credit during the last half century many offices of trust and responsibility, both by election and appointment, is Judge Daniel Sherman, the present surrogate of Chautauqua county, He is a son of Daniel and Eunice (Clark) Sherman, and was born in the town of Busti, Chautauqua county, New York, November 29, 1821. Judge Sherman’s grandfather, Humphrey Sherman, was a Quaker resident of Amherst, Mass., where he married and reared a family of three sons and three daughters. The Clarks, like the Shermans, were of English descent, and the Judge’s maternal grandfather, Henry Clark, was born and reared at Hoosick, N. Y. He was a farmer, a whig, a congregationalist. Daniel Sherman (father) was born in Amherst, Mass., in 1784 and came to what is now Chautauqua county in 1816. He first settled on the site of Lakewood, in the town of Busti, where he purchased of the Holland Land company 415 acres of land, which he owned at his death. He was one of the first directors of the Chautauqua County Bank at its organization. The town of Busti was organized in 1824, and he was its first supervisor, and continued to hold that office during six successive years, and was chairman of the Board in 1828. His eldest daughter, Harriet, married Pardon Hazeltine, of Busti, who was supervisor from 1836 to 1840. His eldest son, Henry C., married Hepsaba Steward of Connecticut, and was supervisor of Busti town from 1841 to 1846. One son, Ebon G. Sherman, resides at Tidioute, Penna. Another son, Myron C., married Harriet Robertson, is a thrifty farmer and resides on part of the old Sherman homestead at Lakewood, has one son Edward. Another son, Humphrey, a physician, died many years ago at Stockton, leaving a widow residing in Fredonia. Daniel Sherman, Sen., was elected on the Anti-Masonic ticket sheriff of Chautauqua county, and served as such from 1828 to 1832. He died April 11, 1834, aged fifty years.

Surrogate Daniel Sherman attended the Jamestown and Fredonia academies, and prepared in Burr Seminary, Vermont, for the sophomore class in college. Afterwards he read law with Hazeltine & Warren, of Jamestown, was admitted on July 4, 1848, at the only general term of the Supreme Court ever held in Chautauqua county, as an attorney-at-law, and has been engaged in the practice of his profession ever since, except when serving in some public capacity. In 1851 he was elected on the republican ticket, as district attorney of Chautauqua county, served in that office for three years and then became attorney for the Seneca Nation of Indians, which position he held for twelve years. He also served for many years as U. S. agent for the Six Nations of New York, by appointment of the President of the U. S. In 1882, when in the midst of an active practice, he was elected surrogate of Chautauqua county, and at the end of his term of six years he was re-elected for an additional term of six years, which will expire in 1894. He has conscientiously discharged the many duties of that office in an acceptable manner to the public whose approval has been bestowed upon his labors as surrogate.

April 28, 1852, he married Mary Colvill. They had five children: Daniel, who married Grace Greenwood, and is a prosperous farmer in Minnesota; Elizabeth and Mary deceased; William, a photographer; and Julia D. Mrs. Sherman is a daughter of William Colvill, Jr., who was born in Scotland in 1797, had Thomas Carlyle for one of his teachers and came, in 1820, with his father, to Forestville. He married Mary Love, of Nashville, N. Y., and reared a family of five children, one of whom is Gen. William Colvill, receiver of the land office at Duluth, Minnesota, by appointment of President Cleveland. He is a lawyer by profession, and went into the last war as captain of one of the companies of the 1st Minnesota regiment of Vols. He was successively promoted until he was brevetted brigadier-general for gallantry at Gettysburg, where he was severely wounded in the side and foot. On the second day of that great battle, just after General Sickles’ corps had been routed by Longstreet and the latter was making his supreme effort to capture Little Round Top, the pivotal point commanding the field and the Union lines, General Hancock noticed where the Federal lines were breaking, and ordered Col. Colvill’s regiment to hold the breach, which they bravely did by one of the most brilliant charges of the war. Col. Colvill charged with two hundred and forty-seven men, held the Rebel line in check until reinforcements came up, captured the enemy’s colors, leaving 200 of his regiment killed and wounded on the field. The charge is justly noted as one of the most famous in history. After the war the people of Minnesota elected him attorney-general of the State, which office he held one year.

Judge Sherman is a republican in polities, and an earnest friend of education. He aided in securing the annual State academic appropriation of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in 1871 and 1872, served as town superintendent for several years, and was president of the board of education of Forestville free academy over twenty years. While attorney for the Seneca nation, he successfully secured in the court of appeals one of the true boundaries of their reservation, which had been decided adversely several times in the lower courts. He also acquired, in the same court, for the Seneca Indians, their title to the Oil Spring reservation, which title had been omitted in the Big Tree treaty of 1798, and by this omission had passed through Morris to the Holland Land company and their grantees.

In his address, delivered in Jamestown, January 29, 1885, on “The Six Nations” before the Chautauqua Society of History and Natural Science, Judge Sherman threw light on many obscure points in the history of that wonderful Indian confederacy which he so ably and clearly traced, and especially in their past and present land ownership in western New York. In concluding his valuable and interesting address, he said: “There is a public sentiment in this country that the Indian tribes are fast dying out. However this may be true with other Indian tribes, it is not true as to the original Six Nations of New York. Statistics show the Six Nations in Canada, this State and the west to be increasing in population. They (statistics) show a vitality in this people, emerging from barbarism to civilization, that is, under all the adverse circumstances surrounding them remarkable indeed, if not unprecedented.”

Judge Daniel Sherman gives untiring attention to his profession, and every case which he has tried always received his full and careful attention. The grasp of his mind is strong and comprehensive, and he is well-known for his patience, dignity and perspicuity, while his legal efforts are indicative of much research and discrimination.