Sherman, Althea R.; 1943 obit & contents of her will

SHERMAN, MATT, ST JOHN

Posted By: S. Ferrall - IAGenWeb volunteer
Date: 1/9/2014 at 02:25:49

National, Ia. - Funeral services for Miss Althea Sherman, 91, Clayton County pioneer, were held here Monday afternoon at her country home with the Rev. Harold Adix, pastor of the Lutheran church at Farmersburg, officiating. Burial was in the National Cemetery. Miss Sherman died Friday night at her home following a stroke suffered a week ago.

She and her sister, the late Dr. E.A. Sherman, were listed in the 1935 "Who's Who of the Women of the Nation" in honor of their ornithological contributions. The colonial home, hidden in the trees and shrubbery, is known as "Acre of Birds". It was built in 1845 by their father, Mark Sherman, and was the first frame dwelling on the Iowa prairie north of Dubuque.

Miss Sherman traveled to Egypt to study the birds of the Nile, but it was in her own yard where she conducted studies that won her fame among ornithologists in the United States and Europe. Her report of the humming bird characterized all her bird study.

Her late sister was also widely known in medical circles. Miss Sherman was the last of her family.

~Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, evening edition, Monday April 19, 1943 (obit & photo)

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Elkader, Ia. - An estimated $25,000 is bequeathed Oberlin College in the will of Althea R. Sherman, 91, Iowa pioneer and distinguished ornithologist, who died April 16 at her home near National.

The gift to the college is to be made to the Zoology Department with the provision that bird study shall be included in the course. Miss Sherman and her sister, the late Dr. Amelia Sherman, pioneer physician who left an estate of $130,000 at her death four years ago, were both graduates of Oberlin.

An inventory of Miss Sherman's estate shows assets totaling $75,000, mostly in government bonds and farm land. An outright gift of a 200-acre farm near Postville, not included in the inventory, was made a short time ago by Miss Sherman jointly to Viola Matt, a neighbor girl who had taken care of her in her failing health, and to Viola's brother, Cyrillus Matt, who is in the U.S. Navy.

The will, which was filed here Monday for probate in Clayton County District Court, provides annuities for life of $500 to a nephew, Burton St. John of St. Louis, and a niece, Miss J. Della St. John of Wichita, Kans.

The Garnavillo Public Library is given a $500 endowment, and provision is made for the permanent upkeep of the pioneer cemetery at National and the Sherman home and the grounds about it, famed in ornithological circles as "The Acre of Birds."

The will provides $5,000 to be used in editing and publishing a manscript "Birds of Our Dooryard," on which Miss Sherman had been working in her later years, as the last of many contributions she made to American bird literature.

A.J. Palas, Postville attorney, and former president of the Iowa Ornithologists' Union, is named executor of the will.

~Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, evening edition, Tuesday, April 27, 1943

Clayton Obituaries maintained by Sharyl Ferrall.
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