Biographical Sketch of Elizabeth Waite Jones Sherman

Biographical Database of Militant Suffragists, 1913–1920

Biography of Elizabeth Waite Jones Sherman, 1871-1961

 

By Jennifer Coggins, archivist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Elizabeth Waite Jones Sherman was born 6 November 1871 in Boston, Massachusetts to Elizabeth R. Waite Jones and Jerome Jones, the head of the Jones, McDuffee, and Stratton crockery and glass import business. Her mother died in 1878 when Elizabeth was 6 years old. Her father remarried three years later to Maria E. Dutton.

In 1898, Elizabeth married Alfred Palmer Sherman in Brookline, MA. He was then a salesman for the Claflin and Coburn shoe company. The couple lived in Chestnut Hill and in 1899 had their first child, who did not survive. In 1900, the Shermans built a home in Framingham, MA. Around that time, Alfred Sherman was made treasurer of his company, then reorganized as the F. Brigham and Gregory Company.

In the following years, the couple had three more children: Thomas Foster Sherman (1902), Jerome Esterbrook Sherman (1903), and Elizabeth Sherman (1909). In 1910, Alfred Sherman died at age 44. The 1910 census shows Elizabeth living with her three children and four servants in the house in Framingham.

In April 1917 Sherman went with other members of the National Woman's Party to lobby members of Congress to support women's suffrage. Around this time, she was also a member of the Circulation Committee for the Party's publication, The Suffragist, and she was recognized in the publication along with other members who secured new subscribers.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Elizabeth Jones Sherman appears to have travelled internationally with her daughter Elizabeth. Her daughter died in 1932, and her sons Thomas Foster Sherman and Jerome Esterbrook Sherman died in 1944 and 1948, respectively.

She was a member of the First Church in Boston, and founded chapters of the Red Cross at the First Church and at Longwood Towers in Brookline. She was also a member of Boston's Saturday Morning Club.

She died 8 February 1961 at age 89 in Boston, where she lived at Longwood Towers.

Sources:

Denehy, John William. "Jerome Jones" in A History of Brookline, Massachusetts. Brookline (MA): Brookline Press Company, 1906.

Eliot, Samuel Atkins, ed. "Alfred Palmer Sherman" in Biographical History of Massachusetts: Biographies and Autobiographies of the Leading Men in the State, Volume 5. Boston: Massachusetts Biographical Society, 1909.

"Massachusetts Marriages, 1841-1913," database, Familysearch.org.

"United States Census, 1910," database with digital images. Familysearch.org.

"The First Drive on the Sixty-fifth Congress," The Suffragist, 7 April 1917.

"Members Securing Suffragist Subscriptions through December 21, Inclusive," The Suffragist, 28 December 1918.

"New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957," database and digital images, Ancestry.com.

"United States, California, list of United States citizens arriving at San Francisco," database and digital images, Ancestry.com.

Boston Traveler, 11 February 1961.

"Services Tomorrow for Mrs. Sherman," Boston Herald, 10 February 1961.

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