Sherman, Roger, 1839-1897.

Roger Sherman was born in Randolph, Tennessee on July 28, 1839. He was admitted to the Arkansas bar and served in the Confederate Army prior to moving to the Pennsylvania oil fields in 1865. In 1868 he moved from Pithole City to Titusville, where he practiced law and worked with independent petroleum producers and refiners to organize effective competition to the Standard Oil Trust. He was active in state Democratic politics and was the editor of the American Citizen. Sherman died in New York City on September 19, 1897.

From the description of Roger Sherman papers, 1770-1935 (inclusive), 1870-1897 (bulk). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 702166877

Roger Sherman was born in Randolph, Tennessee on July 28, 1839. He was admitted to the Arkansas bar and served in the Confederate Army prior to moving to the Pennsylvania oil fields in 1865. In 1868 he moved from Pithole City to Titusville, where he practiced law and worked with independent petroleum producers and refiners to organize effective competition to the Standard Oil Trust. He was active in state Democratic politics and was the editor of the American Citizen. Sherman died in New York City on September 19, 1897.

Roger Sherman was for years the outstanding lawyer of the old Pennsylvania oil region, a leading Democratic politician, and the inspirer of two successive movements of independent petroleum producers and refiners in their attempt to restore free enterprise to their industry. His father was Dr. Isaac De Blois Sherman of Pompey, New York, who moved to Syracuse to practice and for a few years edit the Jacksonian Democratic organ, the Argus, in 1831-1833. Roger Sherman's mother was Phoebe Conkling, aunt of Roscoe Conkling, a Republican congressman and senator from New York. Roger Sherman was born in Randolph, Tennessee, on the banks of the Mississippi River, on July 28, 1839, where his father had gone to practice and engage in business four years earlier, after succumbing to the western "fever."

A few years later Dr. Sherman moved to Arkansas. (He was killed on his plantation by unknown hands during the Civil War.) Roger had only two years of preparatory school and began supporting himself at the age of fifteen. After several years of outdoor work as chainman for civil engineers he read law and was admitted to the Arkansas bar. He joined the cavalry of General Nathan B. Forrest after the outbreak of the Civil War. At the end of the war, finding his Arkansas home in ruins and the outlook there hopeless, Roger Sherman visited relatives in Michigan and then moved to the newly developed oil region of Pennsylvania. With it he identified his fortunes for the remainder of his life.

From 1865 to 1868, Roger Sherman practiced law in Pithole City, the spectacular center of a short-lived boom. When the great fire of January, 1868, destroyed Pithole and left Sherman again penniless, he moved first to Pleasantville and then to Titusville, where he established a legal practice. In 1871 Sherman married Alma Seymour. They had two children, Alma Janet and Roger Seymour Sherman.

From 1868 to the mid-seventies, Titusville was the center of the petroleum-producing industry and the site of an increasing number of refineries. Because of his position as the town's outstanding lawyer, Roger Sherman was drawn into the struggles between the independents and the attempts of the Erie Ring and then Standard Oil to monopolize the industry. When the lines of conflict were drawn in 1872, he aligned himself with the independents and for some years was a central figure in the fight of the General Council of the Independent Producers of Petroleum against Standard Oil. As part of this conflict he became a manager of the Petroleum World (1879-1881) to which he contributed. Similarly, he became active in state Democratic politics in an attempt to curb the power of corporations.

In 1882, after the independent producers' movement had disintegrated, Roger Sherman entered the service of Standard Oil as an attorney under a five-year contract. He tendered his resignation after only a year of this service, only to have it rejected. It was not until 1887, therefore, that he resumed independent practice. Before this he founded and edited the weekly Titusville Citizen (1885-1889), as the Democratic Party organ. In 1884 he ran for mayor of Titusville and was beaten by a small majority.

From 1887 until his death ten years later, he was associated with the revived movement of the independent refiners and producers who sought to give effective competition to the Standard Oil Trust. The struggle terminated after Roger Sherman's death, in the organization of the Pure Oil Company, the basis for which he had laid in persuading the independents of the imperative need to combine forces if they were to survive. During this period it was he who planned the strategy and fought the legal battles that were incident to the construction of the United States Pipe Line from Butler to the Atlantic Ocean. As part of this struggle, Roger Sherman undertook the preparation of a comprehensive criminal suit under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act against the leading officials of Standard Oil. Owing to his death in September 1897, it was never initiated. In this last abortive effort, as in his Democratic politics and leadership of the independents, Roger Sherman was impelled by the ideals of the Jacksonian era, with its love of individual liberty and hostility to monopoly and special privilege.

Extracted from Chester McArthur Destler's "The Roger Sherman (Titusville, Pennsylvania) Collection," The Yale University Library Gazette, 1947 January.

From the guide to the Roger Sherman papers, 1770-1935, 1870-1897, (Manuscripts and Archives)