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Father Thomas Ewing Sherman was born Oct 12 1856 in San Francisco. The sixth child of William T. Sherman and Ellen Boyle Ewing, he graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1874 at the age of 18 and went on to earn a Ph.D. from Yale in 1876. He returned to St. Louis where his family was living and studied law where he graduated with a law degree from Washington University . Thomas Sherman had always been counted on by his father, "Cump", to oversee the family's finances and business affairs. But to his great sorrow, Tom decided in 1878 to enter the Society of Jesus. Such was Cump's grief that he refused to attend when Tom was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1879. He then taught philsophy at St. Louis University where he was recognized nationally as a brilliant scholar and eloquent speaker and writer. He served as a military chaplain in the Spanish-American War of 1898 where he was attached to the personal staff of General Ulysses S. Grant, II. In 1891, Father Tom conducted the graveside service in St.
Louis for his father, but was unable to return from London, where he was studying
theology, in time to say goodbye to the dying Cump. Proving that "fact is stranger than fiction," a small cemetery in Grand Cateau, Louisiana, has two unlikely "bedfellows" buried side by side uner identical Latin inscribed tombstones. One, Father John Salter, was the grandnephew of Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, and on his right, lies Thomas Ewing Sherman, son of General and Mrs. William T. Sherman. Why was the Confederacy vice president's grand nephew buried next to the son of the Union general who was the scourge of the South? Father Salter was simply the next Jesuit in the Province to die following Sherman. For more information about the family of Thomas Ewing Sherman, go to Descendant Names.
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