Francis Joseph Sherman
| Francis Sherman | |
|---|---|
| Born | Francis Joseph Sherman February 3, 1871 Fredericton, NB |
| Died | June 15, 1926 (aged 55) Atlantic City, NJ |
| Resting place | Forest Hill Cemetery, Fredericton |
| Occupation | banker |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Citizenship | British subject |
| Alma mater | University of New Brunswick |
| Genre | poetry |
| Spouse | Ruth Ann Sullivan |
| Children | Francis, Jerry |
Francis Joseph Sherman (February 3, 1871 – June 15, 1926) was a Canadian poet.
He published a number of books of poetry during the last years of the nineteenth century, including Matins and In Memorabilia Mortis (a collection of sonnets in memory of William Morris).
Sherman was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, the son of Alice Maxwell Myshrall and Louis Walsh Sherman. He attended Fredericton Collegiate School, where he came under the influence of headmaster George R. Parkin, "an Oxonian with an enthusiasm for the poetry of Rossetti, Swinburne, and, notably, Morris," who had also taught Bliss Carman and Charles G.D. Roberts. For a short time, Carman was one of Sherman's teachers.
Sherman entered the University of New Brunswick in 1886, but had to drop out after a year for financial reasons. Louis Sherman abandoned his family, and Francis, as the eldest of the seven children, had to help support them. In 1887 he took a junior post in the Merchants' Bank of Halifax in , transferring back to Fredericton the next year.
Charles G.D. Roberts, who first met Sherman in 1895, described him as "very tall, lean, very dark, with heavy black eyebrows like his mother, and with the large wistful eyes of the poet rather than the banker." Sherman was writing poetry at that time, and with Roberts's encouragement published his first book the next year.
Sherman was engaged to May Whelpey of Fredericton when they were both in their twenties. However, the marriage was called off after she was stricken with infantile paralysis.
By 1898 Sherman was the manager of the Merchants' Bank Fredericton branch, "the youngest man in Canada to hold such an office." He was transferred to the Montreal office in 1899, and in November of that year sent to Havana, Cuba, as the bank's first agent there. He "had established the bank's influence throughout Cuba and the Caribbean by 1901, when the Merchants' Bank changed its name to the Royal Bank of Canada."
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