Charles T. Sherman
Charles T. Sherman was my father's friend and my father his friend, and so when it happened to me that my course of allotted study in college was ended, though meager it was, it was suggested by my father that I take up study in the office of his friend, Charles T. Sherman, and while Charles was in my father's eye I may as well confess that the junior partner of the firm of C.T. and J. Sherman was in my own. They were my preceptors. For three years and more I was associated with them as student and thereafter for some years in more close relationship. I ought to know Charles T. Sherman if close association, week in and week out, as the moons waxed and waned and the sun made annual cycles, enables one to know. But it is not of my personal attachment or individual estimate of his character and capabilities that you, dear SHIELD, would have me write. But the broader estimate, that which was thought of him in the wide field of his acquaintance in old Richland for the quarter of a century in which he was an active factor. As is quite well known by many, he was the eldest of the six sons of his father, Charles R. Sherman, whose birth place was in New England, but who came early to Ohio and settled at Lancaster, and from which the father traveled out on the circuit attending the courts of Ohio, east and west, north and south, of Lancaster. The father, Charles R. Sherman, was the contemporary of Ewing, Beecher, Hammond, Burnett, Pease, Peter Hitchcock, of the giants in the profession in the early years of Ohio's settlement, and his measure as man and lawyer was as full and complete as any as I have named. I have heard my father and others say that he was not only a great lawyer but also a marvelously eloquent man, superior in that regard to any of his gifted sons. Under the constitution of 1802 the judiciary of Ohio was appointed and not elective by the people, as under our present constitution, and it was possible to have the best equipped men made judges. It is no reflection on the incumbents now of judicial places in Ohio. But then the Governor of Ohio appointed, and the Senate of Ohio confirmed, and if we consider the line of Supreme Judges of Ohio up to 1852 no one will gainsay the fact that each and all were able and eminent in the profession, and pure and spotless was the ermine, and broad and basic were their opinions, as enunciated on the circuit and in bane, and Charles R. Sherman when he reached the Supreme Bench was not an exception to the general rule and remark, but he died a young man while in the discharge of his duties on the circuit, and if I recollect right at Lebanon, Warren County. He was the father of Charles T. Sherman, of whom I write. The father, as I have before said, had six sons and also five daughters. How full was his quiver; and when he died he was poor in property; a little homestead in Lancaster. Nothing more was left for widow and sons and daughters. But he possessed friends in the persons of each and every lawyer of any standing throughout all Ohio. Charles T. was cared for by Henry S. Stoddart, of Montgomery County; William Tecumseh by Thomas Ewing; Sampson Parker by Charles Hammond; James by William J. Reese; and John and Hoyt, too young to immediately go out from under the roof three of their mother, remained with her awhile. Then John went with Samuel R. Curtis, the engineer of the Muskingum River improvement, and later both came to Mansfield, where Charles had established himself. Of the daughters, one was the wife of a Supreme Judge of Ohio. One may readily see what manner of man Charles T. Sherman was when we consider heredity; as easily as we see what manner of men were and are his more distinguished brothers, Wm. T. and John. Charles T. was educated at the Ohio University, located at Athens. His early advantages were therefore good. But what of him as a lawyer? What of him as a judge? He was well grounded in the principles of the law, and was a safe, wise and able counselor. An advocate, he was not. A certain timidity restrained him; if he had conquered that he might have been very strong as a trial lawyer. His was a fine form, and as he advanced in years he became somewhat portly. His mental faculties were very active, and he could and did endure much and prolonged work. He, like Jacob Brinkerhoff, in the early years, took a prominent part in the government and management of the local affairs of Mansfield. He was village recorder and mayor, but aside from such official places he had none other save that he was appointed and confirmed U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio, and worthily and ably filled the place for nearly, if not quite ten years; resigning the same he did not long survive. He was a genial man, strongly attached to friends. One of his daughters is the wife of a U.S. Senator. Another, the wife of him who in a few years will command the Army of the Republic. A third is the wife of Colgate Hoyt, an eminent citizen of New York, and his eldest son, Henry S. Sherman, was my pupil, even as I had been his father's. He, the son, stood high at the Cleveland bar, but death met him on the ocean's waves and conquered him as he was making his first trip to Europe. I write at some length of Charles T. Sherman. Save his brother John, I was nearer to him than to any of the illustrious men whose good names and great fame is part of the heritage of the sons and daughters of Richland.
From The Richland Shield & Banner, September 8, 1894
