Author: Nancy Man

William Tecumseh Sherman was a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

He served just under Ulysses S. Grant much of the time. In 1864, when Grant was appointed commander of all Union armies, Sherman succeeded him as the commander of the Western Theater. In 1869, when Grant began his first term as U.S. President, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the U.S. Army. (He remained in that position until 1883.)

Many baby boys were named in honor of General Sherman, particularly in the mid-1860s. It’s hard to know just how many hundreds of namesakes he had, though, given all the possible permutations of his name, and the fact that both “William” and “Sherman” were quite common. Some examples…

• William Tecumseh Sherman Guchess (b. 1869, Michigan)
• William Tecumseh Sherman Holderbaum (b. 1868, Ohio)
• W. T. S. Counts (b. 1867, Missouri)
• William Tecumseh Sherman Peper (b. 1866, Indiana)
• William Tecumseh Sherman Hoyt (b. 1866, Pennsylvania)
• William Tecumseh Sherman Harrison (b. 1866, West Virginia)
• William Tecumseh Sherman Baer (b. 1865, Pennsylvania)
• William Tecumseh Sherman Kirk (b. 1865, Tennessee)
• William Tecumseh Sherman Maurer (b. 1865, Ohio) –
  • He had a brother named after George B. McClellan.
• William Tecumseh Sherman Hammond (b. 1864, Indiana)
• Wm. T. S. Ayer (b. 1863, Vermont)
• William Tecumseh Sherman Taylor (b. 1862, Indiana)

Boys born into Sherman families simply got the given names “William Tecumseh,” or “William T.” Dozens of other families dropped “William” altogether, opting for “Tecumseh Sherman,” or just “Tecumseh.”

Speaking of Tecumseh…how did William T. Sherman come to have such a distinctive middle name?

He was born in Ohio in 1820, the middle child (#6) of 11 siblings. In his memoir, he said that his father, Charles, had “caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees, ‘Tecumseh.'”

When, in 1816, my brother James was born, he insisted on engrafting the Indian name “Tecumseh” on the usual family list. My mother had already named her first son after her own brother Charles; and insisted on the second son taking the name of her other brother James, and when I came along, on the 8th of February, 1820, mother having no more brothers, my father succeeded in his original purpose, and named me William Tecumseh.

Interestingly, one of General Sherman’s nephews — the the son of his younger brother Lampson — was was born in 1861 and named after Elmer E. Ellsworth.

Sources:

• Family Trees – William T. Sherman Papers – LOC
• Sherman, William Tecumseh. Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. Vol. 1. 2nd ed. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1886.
• William Tecumseh Sherman – Wikipedia

P.S. The most notable non-human thing named after General Sherman would have to be the world’s largest tree, the General Sherman Tree in California.