My father used to call my mother “Chief of Stuff,” partly because she was of Native-American heritage, and partly because (like his favorite author, Mark Twain) he thought pretensions of grandness or position were positively hilarious. I think that’s why he enjoyed the antics of Al Capp’s cartoonish figures, you remember the ones that poked fun at capitalists and bureaucrats like Senator Fogbound McFog or what ever he was christened in the Sunday Funnies. Lil Abner. What a guy. A real genuiney Socialist.
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| Roger Sherman. |
And so it is that I sit here wondering what father would do if he were alive to learn the news that a long dead ancestor on his mother Estella Reiter’s side, was the Roger Sherman who helped shape the Declaration of Independence and once done, signed it with a flourish of pen upon parchment. The Shermans hailed from England along with a swarm of others who sailed the bounding main and washed ashore on the east coast. Roger set about making his mark. This news came to me because of the labors of a dedicated kin who runs an enormous sheep ranch (HCR) in South Dakota. It isn’t that she has time to spare, it’s that she uses it to devotedly track the ghosts of the ancient past, when she’s not lambing, shearing, or spinning. I live on floor 17; she lives on ground zero way out there on the Dakota plains.
Speaking of Mark Twain, he once exclaimed, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” which is what I think happens when ancestor-seekers exaggerate, not that Roger Sherman is of no consequence, but in the scheme of things, it’s more the stuff of tea party ladies and gents bragging about their kin. In this case, my kin is memorialized in statues of marble and splendid paints, though frankly my dears, I don’t see any resemblance to either the Reiters or the Moriartys. For one thing, he’s thin. In the above portrait he also seems to lack a sense of humor. I can hardly believe he’s kin, though perhaps a few teeth are missing so he opted to not smile. Or maybe he had no teeth at all.
This guy was a genuine Connecticut Yankee, a later president of Yale, a Congregationalist, and a lawyer to boot, having read for the law, he wrote “A Caveat Against Injustice,” a document warning against economic instability arising from currency fluctuations, i.e. he hated paper money. Gold & silver were his coins of choice. An early economist who wore tights, he would have split them had he lived to witness Wall Street’s shenanigans.
Thomas Jefferson said of him, “That is Mr. Sherman, of Connecticut, a man who never said a foolish thing in his life.”
Gee whiz bang, I’ve said lots of foolish things, some of them in condomania, and from that perspective, it’s hard to believe Roger Sherman (d. 1793) is an actual kin.
I do admire a man who wears tights, however, the boots have got to go.
And furthermore, it says right here in the Wikipedia footnotes, that most of the streets in downtown Madison, Wisconsin are named after the signers of the United States Constitution. Roger was one of those, and yup, Madison has a byway called “Sherman Avenue.” In closing, this swollen Chief of Stuff head of mine failed to mention that Roger also signed the Articles of Confederation.
What a guy. And to think we’re related. I don’t see the resemblance.
