Samuel Sherman Votes to Declare War on Pequot Indians

Portrait of a Pequot warrior by Z.S. Liang.

Researching my family history in England would have been impossible without the internet, the wealth of records kept in the Parish churches, and the detailed English court proceedings that were carefully preserved.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that my Sherman ancestors in England were not just a bunch of sheep shepherds. Many were wealthy cloth merchants and lawyers who did quite well for themselves; some with a family coat of arms. In three centuries of Sherman history in England, I didn’t see one account of any Sherman ancestor shearing sheep for a living. The Shermans bought and processed rough wool into fine cloth and sold it, but they let others do the shearing.

Let me hit the pause button here. I think I may have just now maligned shepherds and sheep. Maybe I’ve seen too many manger scenes with shepherds wearing gunny sacks tied with rope belts. I may have lost sight of the fact that shepherds were the ones who first heralded the Messiah’s birth. Then there’s Jesus himself, in the picture on the wall behind me, holding a shepherd’s hook and a small lamb in the other. Then there’s the other sheep in the background and that other shepherd in the picture looking apologetic and lost. No, looking closer, I see that’s not a shepherd. It’s my wretched guilt ridden reflection in the glass covering the picture.

After Samuel Sherman arrives in New England in 1634, there are a lot of epic things going on in his life. I know that at Samuel’s first home in Wethersfield Connecticut, village members on their way to a meadow they were preparing for planting were ambushed by Pequot Indians. Six men and three women were killed, and two young girls taken captive. These were all close neighbors and church members Samuel must have known well. I don’t know where Samuel or the other Shermans were when this ambush occurred. They may have been actively engaged in fighting off the Indians, or they may have been too far away in the village. I had a strange recurring dream in my youth where I was hiding my sisters and mother in tall, chest-high prairie grass from a band of marauding Indians. Was I channeling the fears or actions of my tenth great grandfather Samuel?

Map of the different Indian tribes in Connecticut.

The Indian attack on Wethersfield was one of many Indian attacks on Puritan settlements. In the 1630’s, Connecticut was in turmoil. The Pequots were extremely aggressive and feared by the neighboring New England tribes. Many of the Pequot battles with tribes like the Narangansett and Monhegan were over dominance in the fur trade. The area had been hard hit by a series of plague epidemics between 1616 and 1619, brought in by European traders and fishermen before the Mayflower landed in Plymouth. With no immunity, it was extremely lethal and, in some cases, it eradicated entire Indian communities. The Pequot tribe took advantage of this, and brutally filled the power vacuum. Efforts to control the fur trade by the English and the competing tribes resulted in a series of escalating incidents and attacks that increased tensions on all sides.

After the Pequot attack, Samuel Sherman left Wethersfield with some of the family members, but it appears that an Edward Sherman and possibly Samuel’s brother, John Sherman, remained in Wethersfield. I found Wethersfield records in 1639 that show where Edward Sherman owned 144 acres and John Sherman owned 240 acres. This was lush fertile land next to the Connecticut River, and I suspect the two Sherman men were reluctant to leave it despite the Indian attacks. The pastor of the 34 Puritan families in Wethersfield was awarded 1200 acres. I would say he basically rewarded himself, since the pastor of each Puritan village was not only the head of the church, but controlled all aspects of the village life through the General Court. There was no separation of church and state matters.

Soon after the attack in Wethersfield, Samuel and some of the family members moved to a larger Puritan village in Stratford, Connecticut. Samuel may have been thinking that Stratford would be more secure, but Pequot Indians were a constant threat to the English settlers in that area also. I know that at the young age of 19, Samuel was one of the men in Stratford on the committee that declared war on the Pequot Indians. Men of fighting age were recruited from the various coastal settlements, and Samuel may have been one of the men under the command of John Mason. They proceeded to attack a large two-acre fortified Pequot village up the coast from Stratford. When they attacked and entered the fort, they were met with 175 warriors who inflicted heavy casualties on the English. The outcome was in doubt until John Mason yelled “We must burn them!” The soldiers then set fire to the village, and left over 400 men, women, and children dead in less than an hour, many of them burned to death. The Pequot warriors continued to battle the English from behind what remained of the palisade but the soldiers surrounded the fort and shot any Indian attempting to escape.

Before I give a brief account of the incident that officially started the war with the Pequots, I should say that almost everything I’ve read, and the little I’ve learned in school, is from the viewpoint of English immigrants like my ancestors, who believed they were instruments of God chosen to populate this new world with their vision of Zion, and to subjugate and indoctrinate the heathen Indians.

I ran across this analysis by one early immigrant (hopefully unrelated), of the plague that devastated the Indian population. “There hath, by God’s visitation, reigned a wonderful plague that has resulted in the utter destruction, devastation, and depopulation of that whole territory, so as there is not left……any that do claim or challenge any kind of interest therein.”

This may have been an extreme view, but it serves to show the underlying thought that the Puritan immigrants were not only destined to conquer this new world, but guided by God to inhabit it. I’m just making note of the fact that the Indian side of the story is tragic and may not have been fairly represented in the history books.

The incident that follows is the final spark that ignited all out war on the Pequots. Merchant John Gallop, sailing in a 20-ton bark (a small sailing ship) accompanied by one other man and two boys, came across a pinnance—a small boat used as a tender for larger trade vessels. They recognized this boat as belonging to trader John Oldham, a member of their congregation. Upon closer observation, they spied 14 Indians on the boat’s deck, and a small canoe, manned by Indians and loaded with goods, hurrying away from the pinnance. Since the boat had set sail and was about two miles from the shore, Gallop and his crew suspected that the Indians had murdered John Oldham. Despite being heavily outnumbered, John Gallop and his small crew, armed with only two muskets, two pistols, and nothing but duck shot, bore up and rammed the pinnance. The Indians, armed with guns, pikes, and swords, were alarmed; six of them jumped overboard and were drowned. Oldham backed off, then rammed the smaller pinnance again, boring through its side and lodging the two vessels together. Several more Indians jumped overboard and a few went below deck. Those below deck were captured and bound, but one unlucky Indian, perhaps because they were short of rope to bind him, was thrown into the water and drowned. The body of Mr. Oldham was found covered with a sail, his head cleft to the brains by a war hatchet. Gallop tried to fasten and haul the smaller ship in, but a storm came up and Mr. Oldham’s vessel was lost. The murder of the trader John Oldham was the final straw that led to the extermination of the Pequot tribe.

Battle at Fairfield Swamp.

The destruction of this large Pequot village near Mystic River (near present-day Groton, CT) prompted the tribe to abandon their smaller villages and seek refuge with the Mohawk tribe. John Mason, along with 160 men and 40 Mohegan scouts, caught up with the fleeing refugees in a swamp near present-day Fairfield, Connecticut. Several hundred surrendered, mostly women and children. Some were kept as household servants, but many were sent to Bermuda and the West Indies to be sold as slaves. Nearly 80 warriors, with their leader, Sassacus, slipped away and continued west. They had hoped to gain refuge among the Mohawk Indians in present-day New York, but instead, the Mohawks murdered Sassacus, and sent his head and hands to the English in Hartford, Connecticut. This was a much-shortened account of the end of the Pequot war. The few Pequots that went to live with the Narangansetts or Mohegans were granted asylum.

Some historians have doubts on the authenticity of traditional accounts of history that valorize Puritans at the expense of the Indian population. It’s important to think about what the centuries old Indian population must have thought about the English taking over their lands.

A few years later, Samuel Sherman was one of the men appointed to guard the coast against incursions from the Dutch, who were still actively competing with the English settlers for the Indian fur trade and controlled the area that is now New York. Finally, I know that Samuel was an active member of the Puritan church in Stratford and a member of the General Court there. He married Sarah Mitchell in 1640, and they had eight sons and one daughter. The son who becomes my 9th great grandfather is his fifth son, John Sherman. In the next three generations of Shermans in my ancestral line, there are two Samuels, and an Elkaneh Sherman. There is little known about them, except the dates of their births and deaths, their wives names, and the primary location where they resided. Maybe some Sherman down the line from me will be more adept at filling in the details of their lives.

The Shermans arrive in the New World

The structure of a ship similar to the "Elizabeth"

            One morning in 1957, I was slipping into the dream cycle of sleep—complete with quiet snoring—when I sensed an ominous presence hovering alongside me.  It was my tenth grade history teacher, who had delivered the boring oral tranquilizer that had put me into this sedated state. He was somewhat sympathetic with my anesthetized condition, and my complete lack of interest in American History and, to be honest, I think he found the class just as interesting as I did.

Roger Sherman

            Looking into the lives of my ancestors has awakened my interest in history. I was fascinated by my Italian ancestry, and started on my English ancestors with the fear that it would be as dull as Mr. Closson’s tenth grade class. If he had told me that a boy my own age—fourteen at the time—came to America from England in a dangerous boat half the size of the Mayflower in 1634, I might have been more interested.  If he had added that Samuel Sherman was an ancestor that I shared with Roger Sherman, who later signed the Declaration of Independence, and William Tecumseh Sherman, the Civil War general, I might have raised my head from the desk.  If he had mentioned that at nineteen Samuel Sherman was fighting the most feared tribe of Indians on the New England Coast, I might have awakened completely and reconsidered my conclusion that history was boring.

I always feared I might be related to the infamous General Sherman, and now it’s confirmed.  Samuel Sherman is the ancestor I share with the proficient but detested William Tecumseh Sherman, who coined the phrase “War is Hell’, and who is blamed for a lot of the fire that made it so.  As a consolation, the distinguished and honorable Roger Sherman, is also a shared ancestor. Roger Sherman, one of the founding fathers of this country, is the only person to have signed all four great state papers of the United States: The Continental Association, the Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution.

The first of many Shermans from Dedham to arrive in New England, John Sherman’s name is found on the passenger list of a small 100 ton ship named “Elizabeth.”  It carried 100 passengers and left Ipswich, England on April 10^th, 1634 and arrived at Watertown, Massachusetts in June of that year.  The “Elizabeth” made a subsequent, undocumented trip in 1634 that brought John’s brother, Samuel Sherman, his father Edmund, and five other Sherman family members.  I try to imagine what 14 year old Samuel must have been thinking as he waved from the deck of the “Elizabeth” at the receding cluster of friends and family on the Ipswich dock.

            I was 14 when my widowed mother re-married, and my new stepfather wanted to re-locate the family from our suburban home in Independence to a remote and isolated farm near the Salt River, several hours away.  I was excited--ecstatic even--since the river joined the farm.  My younger, more sensible, sister threw a rare tizzy, and that was that. That’s not much of an analogy to what Samuel might have been thinking, other than 14 year old boys have little regard for the consequences of their actions. Some of the Dedham emigrants, disappointed with the wild and unsettled conditions in New England, returned to the established village of Dedham.  Samuel, however, when he arrived, pulled on his breeches and boots, shouldered his musket, disembarked from the “Elizabeth”, and apparently never regretted stepping onto the shores of this yet unsettled country.

Gen. William
Tecumseh Sherman

            Flipping through digital pages from the Boston Public Library, I ran across a transcript of an after dinner speech given by General Sherman after the Civil War to an alcohol fueled audience who hung on his every word.  I don’t know where this speech was given, but I’m guessing they were a group of men encouraging General Sherman to run for President.  Sherman had apparently just discovered his genealogical roots and some of what he says is inaccurate.  Here are some snippets from that speech: 

“I learned from books alone, that in 1634, fourteen years after the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, three persons by the name of Sherman reached the Boston coast.” (applause) “Samuel Sherman, a young man, about 14 years of age, and adventurous, emigrated to Connecticut. Samuel Sherman was the ancestor of my branch of the family, and settled at Stratford, Connecticut, and lived there fifty years after reaching his home. He married and had children, and his second son, John Sherman adopted the legal profession (laughter). That John Sherman had another son John, who had a son Daniel Sherman, a man of note in his day.” 

            It is at this point that General Sherman’s ancestors and my ancestors’ part company.  I am a descendant of another of John’s sons born in 1682, named Samuel after his father.  General Sherman goes on about his lineage and ends his speech this way, speaking of his father. There’s some inappropriate laughter:

“I was the sixth child. Our father died and left us all bare, (laughter). But friends came and assisted us, and we all reached maturity, and we all married, and the number of children we had I really cannot keep on counting. (Cheers and laughter). Gentlemen, the Shermans are a numerous family, and I may safely assert that they all obeyed the Divine Commandment – they went forth, increased, and multiplied (laughter), and I hope they have done their share toward replenishing the earth.” (Laughter and cheers.) 

Historians differ from General Sherman’s account that Stratford was Samuels’s first place of residence.  They report that Samuel and his family first lived in Wethersfield, sixty miles inland from the coast. Wethersfield is arguably the oldest town in Connecticut, depending on one’s interpretation of when a remote settlement qualifies as a “town”. The town was established by ten Puritan families in 1634, the very year that Samuel and his family arrived.  It may have proven too remote and too dangerous. 

On April 23, 1637, Pequot Indians attacked the town, killing six men and three women, a number of cattle and horses, and taking two young girls captive.  The girls were later ransomed by Dutch traders.  Edmund, Samuel, and the rest of the Sherman’s then moved to Stratford, Connecticut on the coast.

Lot 52:  S. Sherman

Like Wethersfield, Stratford was started by a small number of Puritan families who had recently arrived from England. I was able to find a map of the original layout of the town showing where the 35 original families had property.  It’s important to remember that Wethersfield and Stratford were two of many towns on the New England coast populated by Puritans.  All of them were seeking freedom to practice their brand of religion free of interference from kings, bishops, parliament, or any other secular authority. Complete political and judicial power was vested in those that professed the Puritan faith; a later wit said “they substituted the tyranny of the brethren for the tyranny of the bishops!”  

Like other Puritan towns, early Stratford was a place where church leadership and town leadership were under the pastor of the church.  Samuel was declared a “freeman” after undergoing an examination of his faith.  A ‘freeman” does not mean a former serf.  In the colonies an eye was kept on new settlers to see if they were free from ideas heretical to the Puritans.  Men declared “freed from watching” were legally termed “freemen” and only then could bear arms, vote, and hold office. We know that Samuel Sherman was declared a “freeman” and became a conspicuous member of the church and a member of the General Court there.

Wethersfield Massacre by Pequot Indians, 1637

            Stratford, like Wethersfield, was not free from Indian attacks. From the outset of the town’s founding, Indians were constant threats.  The Pequot Indians were especially brutal, greatly feared by the other New England tribes. In 1639, in Stratford’s very first year of existence, Samuel Sherman was on the committee that declared war on the Pequot Indians, the same tribe that committed the murders in Wethersfield in 1637.

          

            In the next blog, I’ll deal with the Pequot War, the incursions of the Dutch who controlled New York, and why the Puritans persecuted the Quakers.

“Roaring John Rogers” and the Shermans in Dedham

Roaring John Rogers

Possibly the biggest catalyst that caused our Sherman ancestors to board ships to America in 1634 was the Puritan lecturer “Roaring” John Rogers. Without any of today’s media distractions, there was a public demand for preaching. Communities like Dedham employed a lecturer as well as a vicar. Paid by the wealthy clothiers of Dedham like our grandfather Henry Sherman (12x), John Rogers' duty was to give a lecture on Sunday afternoons from the turret of the north porch of the Dedham Church, and a one hour lecture Tuesday mornings, preceding the opening of the Market in the town center. His theatrical and dramatic style, which included imitating the screams of those damned in Hell, was so popular that it drew enormous crowds, often exceeding 1200 people. There were unintended consequences, as market prices for homemade woven goods and produce were inflated to meet the demand.

15th Century Bible--First Page of the Gospel of Matthew

Here’s a little sample of John Rogers’ preaching style that would cause someone from Cambridge to ride his horse sixty miles to Dedham for the pleasure of hearing him. The subject of this sermon was chastising his audience on the neglect of the Bible.

He represented himself as God in addressing them:

“I have trusted you so long with my Bible; yet you have slighted it; my Bible lies in your houses covered with dust and cobwebs; you have not taken care of it, you have not to look into it. Do you misuse my Bible so? Well, you shall have my Bible no longer.”

He then took up the Bible from the cushion, and seemed as if he were going away with it, and carrying it from them, but immediately turned again and, impersonating the people answering God, fell down on his knees, wept, and pleaded most earnestly:

“O Lord, do whatever You wish to do to us, but take not Your Bible away from us! –Kill our children –Burn our houses –Destroy our goods –Only spare us Your Bible!”

Then he addressed the people as from God:

"Say you so? Well, I will try you a little longer; here is My Bible for you. I will yet see how you will use it –Whether you will love it more, whether you will observe it more, whether you will practice it more, and live more according to it.”

Rogers would often bring his audience to tears. One visitor who had arrived on horseback gives this account after the sermon,“I was fain to hang a quarter of an hour upon the neck of my horse before I had the power to mount, so strange an impression was there upon me and generally upon having been thus expostulated with to the neglect of the Bible.”

Henry Sherman owned a Bible, and it was greatly prized, though it was not recorded in his last will and testament. Henry and the entire Sherman family were faithful puritans and greatly influenced by John Rogers as attested to by their wills, which included fulfilling many of John Rogers’s concerns, like providing for the poor and the education of the Dedham children.

When John Rogers died in 1636, hundreds flocked to the funeral service. The upper gallery of the church was so jam-packed with people that supporting timbers began to creak and give way, nearly collapsing. According to one eye-witness, “It pleased God to honour that good man with a miracle at his death, because no one was injured.”

John Rogers' thirty year lecture-ship in Dedham was not all smooth sailing. The infamous Bishop William Laud tried to suppress him and the non-conforming Puritans in every way possible, and he succeeded in silencing John Rogers for several years beginning in 1629.

Laud was not only disliked by Puritans, but also by the followers of the Church of England, who thought he followed too closely to the beliefs of Catholicism. The royal jester punned about Laud “give great praise to the Lord, and little Laud to the Devil.” Bishop Laud was known to be sensitive about his diminutive stature. In 1640, Laud was accused of treason, specifically “endeavouring to overthrow the protestant religion.” He was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was eventually beheaded in 1645, even though he had been granted a royal pardon.

Vagrant being led by a rope.  Poverty in 15th Century Dedham,
 England led to increase in crime.

There were other reasons that may have prompted some of Henry’s offspring to depart this storied village of Dedham. Some seem similar to our problems today. First, there was a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Around the time our ancestors boarded a ship to America in 1634, it is estimated there were several thousand people in and around Dedham employed in the cloth trade. “The said place (Dedham) consisteth of a small number of clotheyeres, and a great company of poore people which are by them sett on worke.” A list found in Blackwell Hall in 1622 gives the names of perhaps 23 clothiers then resident in Dedham. With so many poor, there were growing problems with theft and burglary. John Rogers addresses the problem with his “Treatise of Love’. He mentions rogues who “swarmed like a plague of locusts,” and makes suggestions on how to treat the poor. “The provision of poor relief might discourage the poor from committing crimes against property since it would establish bonds of obligation between them and their richer neighbors and also reduce the incentive to steal provided by the pinch of want.” The will of Henry Sherman suggests that John Rogers had a profound effect on him:

“I bequeathe my soule into the handes of Almighty God my maker acknowledging Jesus the sonne of the Lyvinge God my only Savyoure and Redeemer by whose pretious bloodletting all my synnes ar washed awaye which hath satisfied the wrathe of God the father and I by his meritts and noe other means shall enherite the Kingdome prepared for the faithefull.”
“I will to the poore of Dedham twenty poundes to be a contynewall (continual) stocke for the poore to the worldes ende and the use and benefit of it to goe to the poore.” Henry wills an additional “twentie pounds for the poore” and sets up a continuous fund to support the free grammar school for the poor children in Dedham.

Edmund’s older brother Henry received the bulk of the elder Henry’s estate and the family clothier business. Edmund inherited ten poundes, and his son, also named Edmund, inherits 13 poundes when he came of age. It is the younger Edmund, my 11th great grandfather, who is the immigrant from which most American Sherman’s have descended from. His 14 year old son Samuel accompanied him and it is Samuel who is my 10th great grandfather.

I find it interesting in the will that Henry left 40 shillings to the vicar Parker who was defrocked 9 years later for attempting to seduce two married women of the Parish.

Henry Sherman sets up shop in picturesque Dedham Village; Puritans deal with hunting hawks in church and rampant pre-nuptial fornication

                   

The Vicar was keeping track of illegitimate liaisons

Henry Sherman c1510-1589

Henry Sherman was my 13th Great grandfather, fourth son of the notorious “disturber of his neighbors” Thomas Sherman and his “staves and stoneys” wielding wife, Jane Waller.

Wisely, Henry turned his back on the law and returned to the profession that made the family wealthy to begin with. When he came of age, Henry began the seven year apprentice- ship required to become a “clothier.” This, you might remember, is the business of refining rough woolen cloth into the first-rate cloth worn by those who could afford it. The process was full of closely guarded trade secrets and it required substantial capital to get into the business.

Sherman's Southfield house in Dedham

At the age of 23, Henry left his quarrelsome family and neighbors and moved to the scenic little village of Dedham in Suffolk County, nearly one hundred miles away from Yaxley. Dedham was already a rich little “wool town” and he married Agnes Butter, the daughter of a wealthy and influential wool merchant in Dedham.


Henry soon became an influential member of the small village himself, and in the forty years he resided there, only two complaints against Henry show up in the local courts. In 1548, a precept was issued to Henry Sherman in the Dedham Court to remove rubbish “from the footway against his door, under penalty”, and in 1573, a precept was issued to Henry to scour (clean) his ditch all the way to the house of John Stone. Maybe Henry was a bit lax when it came to taking out the trash or keeping his yard trimmed, but there were no major complaints against Henry in his four decades in Dedham.

The idyllic little village of Dedham and its surrounding rural landscape became the subject for John Constable, one of England’s most famous landscape painters. In his youth, Constable attended grammar school in Dedham, and his father’s mill was visible from the church tower in the village.

Painting by John Constable showing his father's mill,
with Dedham in the background.

Looking at the pastoral Constable paintings, with their peaceful rolling hills, the meandering Stour River coursing through the lush countryside, and the grain laden oxcart pulling up to the Constable Mill, you would never suspect there was trouble brewing in Dedham.

Recently I heard the lyrics to “Well, Ya Got Trouble,” from the ‘The Music Man.” The lyrics describe the corrupting effects the pool hall is having on the youth of the community. “Well, ya got trouble, my friend, right here. I say trouble right here in River City.”


Here’s my botched Dedham 15th Century version; “Wyll, ya got troble, my friend, right hyre, I say, troble right hyre in Dedham Vyllage, wyth a capital D.

Hawks banned from Dedham Church.

The trouble was not billiards, but the Dedham parishioners were bringing hunting hawks into the church, getting drunk and brawling in the local tavern, and engaging in lots of pre-nuptial fornication, known today as pre-marital sex.

Something had to be done in this Puritan stronghold where things had clearly gotten out of hand. The parishioners “joyned together” with the two ministers in Dedham and proceeded to establish “The Dedham Orders” to re-establish some semblance of decency. The 15 edicts that resulted from this effort were designed to greatly inhibit the fun loving ways of the parishioners and established a blueprint for other Puritan strongholds in England.


Many of the tenets of these “Dedham Orders” were carried to New England in the next century. I will list only a few of the articles.

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday before communion “maryed persons will repair to the church at six in the morning to be examined in their Christian knowledge. The Dedham youth were given the same treatment on Saturday afternoons.

There was an authoritative treatise on keeping the Sabbath, which included many pages devoted to persuading worshipers not to bring their hunting hawks into the church during the service.


Attending a church outside the parish was considered nearly treasonous. One family who dared was exiled from Dedham, and their home appropriated and sold.

John Constable painting of the town of Dedham, with
church in the background.
Who would guess such a peaceful little town was so full
of sin?

The community was small, but records were kept religiously. Public drunkenness and breaking the Sabbath were serious offenses, but the community seemed obsessed with pre-nuptial fornication. 133 cases of pre-nuptial fornication are found in the record books in the late 1500’s compared to ten offenses of public intoxication.


A special ceremony of public humiliation was added to the wedding and baptismal services of couples known to have been guilty of pre-nuptial fornication.




If a couple “be knowen to have knowne one another carnally before the celebratinge of their marriage” that celebration should be made an occasion of public scorn and rebuke “to the humblinge of the parties and terrifyinge of others from the like filthie propaninge (profaning) of marriage.” Children would have been the best evidence that illicit intercourse had occurred, so beyond that I don’t know how it was determined. A little glimmer of kindness is evidenced by the fact that “an affianced man had to be thrown from a horse and killed before the wedding for a prenuptially conceived child to become a bastard.”

One result of this obsession with sex seems to have been the downfall of the Vicar of Dedham. It was the vicar who had been keeping track of the infractions, and enforcing the punishments on the pre-marital sex offenders. The mind of the vicar seems to have been disturbed. His “devout belyef in sexual restraint having deserted him he decided to seduce the wife of one of his sidesmen, Robert Thorne. For good measure he also made dishonorable proposals to Elizabeth Martin, the wife of the poor tailor who was his next door neighbor. Mr. Martin was somewhat amused by the incident. As he told his wife, “yf Mr. Parker be of that sorte, what shall one saye to ytt.” Echoes of today’s “Me too” movement against sexual harassment occurred when a church member admonished the vicar not to conceal the matter. The attempted seduction of Robert Thorne’s wife was presented to the archdeaconry court in October of 1589. The penalty for ministers guilty of so grave an offence as sexual misconduct was deprivation. I don’t know what deprivation entailed? Maybe it was the prevention of normal interaction between Parker and the rest of the Dedham society. In the end Parker resigned and had to perform penance in the Dedham Church for attempting the chastity of Thorne’s wife.

Next week I will try to explain other troubles in Dedham that lead some of Henry’s offspring to pack their bags and leave this scenic area of Suffolk England .

Two sons, Henry and Edmund, are the ones from which all of the New England Sherman’s are descended.