UNUSUAL NAME
One of the nice features of FamilySearch.org is the frequent emails (or Facebook messages) with fun facts or important dates from my ancestors. A while back I received an infographic listing some of the unusual names in my family tree. The one that caught my eye was SHEREBIAH. I had never noticed that name and certainly had never heard of it!
But finding this person in my tree was harder than I expected. My personal tree on Ancestry.com is mostly about my husband's side so I couldn't search there. On FamilySearch.org, the search was too broad and produced too many Sherebiahs. Fortunately I was able to search my cousin's tree on Ancestry and that's when I noticed not one, but TWO Sherebiahs!! One of them is a direct ancestor and the other is from a collateral line. I will talk about that one first.
Sherebiah Butts
Sherebiah Butts lived his entire life in Canterbury, Windham, Connecticut where he was born on 11 February 1733 and died on 27 November 1807. He served as a captain in the Revolutionary War, commanding forces at Lexington and Bunker Hill. It is wonderful to have such a patriot in our family tree. But how am I related? Sherebiah Butts is the husband of my 7th great-aunt! He, therefore, is from a collateral line, meaning he is not a direct ancestor such as a grand-parent or great-grand-parent. This is how our relationship looks:
It would be fun to see how many descendants this couple have - that is called descendancy research and I will leave that for another day. I do know that this isn't the only Sherebiah Butts - there were several others in the family, including his son, grandson and a great uncle. Here's the list I found:
So what about the other Sherebiah I found? Is he direct line? Amazingly, yes and completely unrelated to our friend, Mr. Butts.
Sherebiah Lee
Born 5 November 1747 in Barre, Worcester, Massachusetts, he died in Lenox, Madison, New York on 31 January 1843. And, as you may suspect he also served in the Revolutionary War. His service was as a Minute Man, part of the volunteer militia who were ready to serve at a minute's notice. After the war, he became part of the Shays Rebellion, an uprising in 1786-87 against taxes and poor economic conditions. This Rebellion was a major impetus for the Constitutional Convention. Wow, I have so much more research to do on this gentleman who is my 5th great-grandfather.
I also learned that Sherebiah, though not common, does have a biblical origin. Sherebiah was a priest connected with Ezra and Nehemiah in Jerusalem. He is mentioned in the 8th chapter of Ezra. The name means "flame of the Lord".
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