This pair of graves tells a sad story - of an aunt and niece who never met each other, but shared the same name, and both experienced untimely deaths. Anna Augusta Sherwood, born in 1844, was the daughter of farmer Abram Sherwood and his wife Susan M. Gregory. She died in 1869 at the age of 25. Annie Augusta Sherwood was the daughter of Abram and Susan's son Sylvester and his wife Sarah Elizabeth Sniffin. She was born in 1872 and died in 1893 at the age of 21. Anna and Annie are buried in the Methodist portion of the cemetery along with Abram Sherwood and Anna's sister Mary Frances, who died at the age of 11 in 1855.
Sadly, this was not the full extent of the Sherwood family's misfortune. In 1872, the
Yonkers Statesman made the following report on the 25-year-old Sylvester Sherwood:
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| Yonkers Statesman 2 May 1872 |
A year later, the
Statesman reported that Sherwood had once again been committed, and was "hopelessly insane." During this time Sherwood was already married to his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Sniffin, and they had one child, the ill-fated Annie Augusta, named for his deceased sister.
As the census shows, in 1880 Sherwood was back at home with his wife and their two children, Anna and Vernon, but it would not be long before the family was driven apart permanently by Sherwood's mental illness. When he was not ill, Sherwood worked as a farmer and later as a teamster.
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| 1880 US Federal Census |
In April 1886, Sherwood sued his wife Sarah Elizabeth for divorce on the grounds of her adultery with the lawyer A. J. Adams, a boarder in the Sherwoods' house. However, the local community seems not to have believed Sherwood's claims, rather attributing them to "one of his hallucinations":
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| Yonkers Statesman 19 April 1886 |
Shortly after, Adams accused Sherwood of threatening his life; the case was brought to court, but ultimately dropped. Seven years passed, during which Sherwood was again committed to and released from the Poughkeepsie Asylum. The following incident, described in the
Yonkers Statesman on June 30, 1893, occurred just weeks after the death of Sherwood's daughter Annie Augusta.
A DANGEROUS LUNATIC
Sylvester Sherwood of Mt. Kisco While Insane Tries to Commit Murder.
Mount Kisco was thrown into a high state of excitement about 9 o'clock Tuesday morning by pistol shots in George Knapp's grocery store on Main street. Sylvester Sherwood, who had made repeated threats to kill Lawyer A. J. Adams, had tried to knock him on the head with a loaded whip handle, but was frustrated in the attempt, and the lawyer had fired the shots.
This was the culmination of an old feud. For the past eight or ten years Sherwood has accused Adams of having broken up his family, and has threatened a good many times to kill him. Since last Saturday he has been looking for Adams. Adams heard of this and consequently prepared for any emergency.
Tuesday morning Adams, who has his law office above the grocery, went into the store to retrieve his key. As he was going out of the door Sherwood crept up behind him. Adams heard him and told him to stop. Sherwood did not stop, and Adams pulled out his pistol, again telling Sherwood to halt or he would fire. As he did not obey, Adams fired a shot to scare him, but he did not scare. Then Adams fired another shot at Sherwood, and the bullet grazed the back of his right hand, inflicting a flesh wound.
Sherwood, who is known to be insane, was seized and held until Constable Quimby came and took him to the lock-up. Adams was allowed his liberty. When Sherwood was placed in the lock-up he raved wildly and said he would yet kill Adams.
Two years ago Sherwood's wife found it impossible to live with him, and she returned to her father, Benjamin Sniffin at North Castle in Westchester county. Sherwood has recently threatened to kill half a dozen residents of Mount Kisco against whom he has only a fancied grievance. He has been an inmate of the insane asylum six times.
Sherwood was Tuesday afternoon committed by Justice Crane to await the action of the grand jury of a commission to determine his mental condition.
Although it is clear that at this point Sherwood had been insane for many years, I have to wonder if this particular incident - in which he targeted a man he blamed for destroying his family - was precipitated by the death of his daughter (she died on May 5, and this report appeared on June 30). The reporter who wrote up the incident for the
New York Herald seemed to think so:
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| New York Herald 28 June 1893 |
Shortly afterward, the 46-year-old Sherwood was committed to the Poughkeepsie Insane Asylum once again. The
New York Press, in its report on the incident, provides additional details about Sherwood's life and illness. Sherwood was, they reported, "intermittently insane," and had last been released from the asylum the past fall. After his release, he had lived with his daughter Annie Augusta until her untimely death.
Not all of Sherwood's commitments to the asylum were involuntary. On January 4, 1889, the
Mount Kisco Recorder reported that Sherwood had been feeling "rather low-spirited, and thought it would be best to take another course of treatment during the winter months" at the Poughkeepsie Asylum. If we can trust this short statement as an accurate record of Sherwood's mental state, it seems possible that he was suffering from what today would be called bipolar disorder.
During this time Sherwood's parents, Abram and Susan, were still alive and living on Sarles Street. They died in 1901 and 1910, respectively.
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| Hudson River State Hospital (source) |
The 1900, 1910, 1915, and 1920 censuses all record Sylvester Sherwood living in the
Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane in Poughkeepsie (pictured above). He died in 1921 at the age of 74. Unfortunately, the multiple reports on Sylvester Sherwood that appeared in local newspapers throughout the late 19th century don't give us much of an idea what he was like when he was not insane. The reporters, understandably, were more interested in the juicy story of "a dangerous lunatic" confronting a local lawyer than they were in understanding Sherwood's suffering. The brief mention of Annie Augusta's recent death in the
New York Herald is the closest we get to empathy on the part of the press. From a modern standpoint, it's hard not to feel sympathy for a man who obviously suffered greatly - not only from his illness, but the ignorance of his community and the limitations of 19th-century psychiatry.
There is even less to indicate what Sherwood's family must have been going through at the time. Being the wife of a "lunatic" could not have been easy for Sarah Sniffin Sherwood, who was virtually a single mother throughout much of her son and daughter's childhoods. By 1900, with her husband committed more or less permanently, she had moved in with her brother Enoch Sniffin and his wife Caroline in North Castle. She died somewhat before 1913.
I can only speculate as to what Sherwood's children would have felt about their father's illness, but based on the fact that he was living with her at the time of her death, it would seem that Sherwood had at least something of a solid relationship with his daughter Annie Augusta, and that perhaps, at the age of 21, she had assumed responsibility for her father's care. It certainly seems likely that Sherwood was devastated by her death and plausible that his grief contributed to his mental instability in the weeks afterward.
As for Sherwood's son Vernon, it's impossible to know what relationship he had with his father, or if his own children, Frances (born 1910) and Vernon Donald (born 1916), ever met their grandfather. Vernon had moved to White Plains by 1900 and ultimately settled there with his wife Georgia, working as a motorman and a mechanic for a trolley company. Vernon Sherwood was a sergeant in World War II and died in 2006.
- Abram Sherwood (1812-1901) m. Susan M. Gregory (1824-1910) in 1840
- Anna Augusta Sherwood (1844-1869)
- Mary Frances Sherwood (1845-1855)
- Sylvester G. Sherwood (1847-1921) m. Sarah E. Sniffin (1848-)
- Annie Augusta Sherwood (1872-1893)
- Vernon Sherwood (1877-) m. Georgia (1880-)
- Frances Sherwood (1910-)
- Vernon Donald Sherwood (1916-2006)
