Admittedly, I don’t know near as much about my mother’s side of the family as I do my Dad’s. But one thing is for sure, they both gave me names that are difficult for people to pronounce.
My first name, Sherrill (pronounced the same as Cheryl) is my mother’s maiden name. Since I wasn’t around, I will have to rely on what I was told which is, there was a division of opinions as to what my name should be. So I got named after an aunt whose name was Elizabeth Sherrill…later King.
I am the first born…and the only girl. My mother was determined to name one of her children Catherine Ann but the next two to come along were boys, so she never got her wish.
From what I have gathered by bits and pieces over the years, the name Sherrill is English and somewhere a lake is involved. I think the lake came first, then the village. And later when settlers started to come to the New World, the name followed. There are quite a number of towns around the United States with the name of Sherrill. The smallest city in the state of New York is called Sherrill and lies between Syracuse and Rome. There is a Sherrill in Iowa and I believe there is one in Tennessee.
The first Sherrill landed in what is now New York in 1633 and since that time there are a number of politicians in the ancestral tree; plus a company that sells climbing gear and a furniture company that carry the Sherrill name. There has been a few sports figures and Billy Sherrill was a much sought after member of the music community in Nashville.
Papa (grandpa) was in the Navy and spent 34 year as a fireman. He and grandma had five children.
No one in my immediate family has ever done a family tree to see how or even if some of these people are directly related to us.
If it were my Dad’s side of the family, I could tell you a lot more since my step-mother has traced the family off the way back to Jamestown in 1607.