History
Jesse Sherwood was born in Milford, Delaware, moved to Missouri, and during the Civil War went east and enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1862. He was then eighteen years old. He served aboard the gunboat USS Somerset as a surgeon’s steward under a Lieutenant Commander English. Sherwood was in service for twenty-seven months, participating in many eventful naval episodes of the war, mostly off the coast of Florida.
After being discharged in 1864, Sherwood returned to Edina, Missouri and married Isabelle Flagler of La Grange, later running a combination drug and grocery store. In 1878 he moved to Quincy, Illinois, and then to Chicago, where he becoming a live stock commission merchant of cattle at the Union Stock Yards.
Sherwood always had a deep interest in civic affairs and served in many official capacities throughout his life, including serving for three years on the Chicago Board of Education and as a one-time president of the National Stock Yards. He was a member of the George A. Meade Post, G.A.R., the Farragut Naval Association and several hunting clubs. In Chicago there is a public school named in his honor, which is across the street from Sherwood Park, one of seven neighborhood playgrounds created by Chicago’s Special Park Commission in 1914.
Jesse Sherwood died in 1912.