Our Ambassador At Large The Ewings and the Sherman’s An Interview with General Tom Ewing He is for Our Milton – His Views on Several Important Themes
The Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, OH 3 May 1877 p4
Lancaster, O., May 1, 1877
Lancaster still dozes as quietly as ever on the banks of the Hocking. The rough hills stand about her as sentinels of her security, and the meager smoke ascending from her manufactures testifies that she, too, is waiting for that revival of trade. This fine old town is celebrated for its great men and a few mean ones. The Ewings, The Shermans, Henry Stanbery, and Hockhocking Hunter are conspicuous among the great ones who have made this their abiding place.
Then there is George E. Howe, the Yankee schoolmaster, who fastened himself onto the State and the Ohio Reform School years ago, who has fed a host of relatives at the public crib and made a fortune out of a salary of $1,200 a year, and covered all this section of the country with scandal and indignation. He is one of the brightest of Governor Hayes’ civil service appointments. He belongs to Lancaster or its vicinity.
The Ewings and the Shermans
Much has been written about the Shermans and the Ewings, but I could never understand the two families’ relations. Yesterday I ran across a person familiar with their histories who gave me facts that have never been in print.
There were eleven of the Sherman children. The old Sherman mansion still stands on the hill, a house or two removed from the old Ewing homestead. The head of this large family was Judge[Charles Robert Sherman] Sherman, a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio in its earliest days. He was a Connecticut Yankee and a grand-nephew of old Revolutionary Sherman. He came to the new country in the early settlement of Ohio or shortly after its admission to the Union. [1803 -Ohio has formed] An intimacy between him and Senator Tom Ewing lasted until Sherman’s sudden death of cholera in Lebanon, Ohio, in 1828.
He left eleven children and a small property. The eldest, Charles Sherman, lives in Cleveland, was a Judge, and disgraced himself by certain unjust transactions a few years since. Jim Sherman, the second son, was a merchant, loving whisky better than business. He has been dead for some years. William T. Sherman, the General, was the third son. He was a bright boy, and Tom Ewing took a fancy to him, and, notwithstanding he had four boys and two girls of his own, he took the boy Bill, as he was called, to his own hearthstone.
Through the Ewing influence, young Sherman was sent to West Point by Tom Richey of Perry County, one of the few Representatives of the young State in Congress. During his residence in the Ewing family, he formed the attachment which led to his happy marriage to one of the two Ewing girls.
Lampson Sherman is an Iowa farmer. John Sherman is a Senator and about as mean as a prominent man who breathes the American continent’s air. Hoyt Sherman is a National banker in Des Moines, Iowa, and when his brother John concocts a financial measure, he always has his eye on Hoyt’s and his own bank stock.
The girls were all married and became Mrs. Reese and Mrs. Willoch of Lancaster, Mrs. McComb of Mansfield, Mrs. Barclay of
Washington, and Mrs. C. W. Moulton (Charles W. Moulton) of Cincinnati. Of this remarkable family of children, ten out of eleven of the children are living, and the grandchildren aggregate fifty.
Of the Ewings, General Hugh, Judge Philimon, and General Tom all live here; General Charley Ewing resides in Washington. The men who are to figure most prominently in the new Administration and Congress are connected by blood ties and marriage.
When Jim Blaine raised the war-whoop in the Senate over Hayes’ Peace-on-earth-good-will-to-men policy and reached for John Sherman’s scalp, he was going for one of his own family. The daughters of old Neal Gillespie of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, were Jim Blaine’s and the Ewings’ mothers.
The “G.” in Mr. Blaine’s name came from his grandfather. We will have old Neal Gallespie’s fighting blood in the Senate leading the war Republicans, in the person of James G. Blaine, and the House leading the war Democrats in the person of General Tom Ewing. Both are men of very similar type and striking personal and physical resemblance. Both are agitators and are happiest when somebody else is miserable. Blaine is the politician of the two, and, thanks to his father’s blood, Ewing is the statesman.
Wikipedia has the parentage of Supreme Court Judge Charles Robert Sherman as Taylor Sherman 1758-1815 (birth CT) and Elizabeth Stoddard. Taylor Sherman’s parents were Judge Daniel Sherman and Mindwell (Taylor) Sherman (female).
The Leader of the Next House.
(goes on to discuss politics)
See also Col. John H. Moulton and Sherman, Crank, and Hankins.
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