JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT SHERMAN
SHERMAN, JAMES SCHOOLCRAFT, lawyer, financier, mayor of Utica, representative from New York in the fiftieth to the fifty-ninth Congresses, 1887-1907, was born in Utica, Oneida county, New York, October 24, 1855. His father, Richard U. Sherman, was a prominent journalist in central New York; a member of the New York assembly 1858, 1875 and 1876, and a member of the convention that amended the constitution of the state of New York in 1867. His mother, Mary Frances Sherman, was a woman of strong mental and moral character and to her the son owes much for the cultivation in his life of strong traits of character. His great grandfather, Colonel Lawrence Schoolcraft, was a soldier in the American army in the Revolution and an officer in the army during the war of 1812, and married Margaret Anne Barbara Rowe; his great 2 grandfather, John Schoolcraft, married Anna Barbara Bass and his great 8 grandfather, James Calcraft, came from England to Canada as an officer in the British army in 1727 and subsequently settled in Albany county in the province of New York, where he was a surveyor and school teacher and changed his name from Calcraft to Schoolcraft. Colonel Lawrence Schoolcraft was the father of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864) the celebrated ethnologist, explorer and author. James Schoolcraft Sherman passed his boyhood on the farm of his father and performed the light farm work usually assigned to farmers' sons. In 1867 his parents removed to Utica, New York, and he was transferred from the country district school to Utica academy and when graduated, to Whitestown seminary, where he was also graduated. He then entered Hamilton college and was graduated there A.B. 1878. He took a course in law at Hamilton for one year and in 1879 continued the study of law in the office of Beardsley, Cookinham and Burdick in Utica, New York, and was admitted to the bar in July, 1880. He formed a law partnership with Mr. Cookinham as Cookinham and Sherman in Utica; and his law practice bringing him in touch with financial and business enterprises, he became president of the Utica Trust and Deposit Company and of the New Hartford
