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Note: "he came into the Land in the yeare 1623, a single man, & after married Sarah Odding, the daughter of the wife of John Porter by a former husband. This man was of a melancholy temp, he lived honestly & comfortably among us severall years. Upon a just calling went for England & returned againe wh a blessing: But after his fathr in Law John Porter was so caryed away wh these opinions of familisme & siszme he followed them & removedh them to the Iland, he behaved himselfe sinfully in these matters...& was cast out of the church. (Whitmore, "Sixth Report of the Record Commissioners of Boston)
On Nov. 20, 1637, Philip and others in Roxbury were "warned to give up all arms, because the opinions and revelations of Mr. Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson have seduced and led into dangerous errors many of the people here in New England." He was brought over to "Familism" by Porter, his wife's stepfather. In 1836 he was one of the purchasers on the island of Aquidneck, new Rhode Island, and when a government was formed there in 1639, he became secretary under Governor William Coddington. He was made a freedman on March 16, 1641, served as general recorder from 1648-1652 and deputy from 1665-1667. After moving to Rhode Island, he left the Congregational church and joined the Society of Friends. (Ancestors and Descendants of Philip Sherman of Portsmouth, Newport County, Rhode Island)
The will of Philip Shearman (Sherman) was written July 31, 1681 and proved in Portsmouth, RI, on March 22, 1686/7. In it, he gave his widow, Sarah, "the use and her dwelling in the first room at the west end of my now dwelling house & bed and bedding with the furniture therefore belonging now standing in the aforenamed room." It was his will that "my executor shall sufficiently maintain my loving wife with food and raiment and all necessaries whatsoever during her natural life and at her decease decently to bury her." He also provided Sarah with "ten good ewe sheep to be marked out of my flock for the sole use and dispose both of bodie and wool yearly." His son, Eber, was to receive "that which I have already given him, ten acres of land in the bounds of Portsmouth aforesaid at a place called Briggs swamp...And all my horse flesh in the Narragansett country except one mare, the second best; such excepted mare, I give to Thomas Mumford and Peleg Mumford, my grandchildren." Sarah also received "two great chests with lock and key to each of them." (Roy V. Sherman, Some of the Descendants of Philip Sherman..., pp. 26-28)
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