David
Simmons will present the Delaware County Sherman Bridge Building Family
to the Big Walnut Area Historical Society beginning at 7:30 Tuesday, August 11
in the Myers Inn Museum.
David Sherman moved
from Connecticut to the village of Berkshire, where he worked as a carpenter
specializing in wagons. He soon began bidding on county bridge projects, and
during the 1850s was among the area’s most prolific bridge builders. Before he died
in 1867, several of his sons joined him in the business. It was, however, his
nephew Everett Sherman from Galena who most famously followed in his footsteps,
developing his own patented bridge truss in 1877. In the 1880s, he began
specializing in an 1846 bridge truss whose patent had long since expired and
made it into an extraordinarily successful business venture whose influence
stretched from Delaware County into western Ohio.
After introducing covered
bridges and their unique history and designs, Simmons will explore the impact
of the Sherman Family on Delaware County’s river and stream crossings. It is a
story that ends up in Preble County where six of Sherman’s covered bridges
remain.
Mr. Simmons is an
officer of the Ohio Historic Bridge Association. He has more than four decades
of experience at the Ohio History Connection - formerly Ohio Historical
Society, in Preservation Division and then on the editorial staff of their popular
history journals. Simmons is co-author of the book Covered Bridges: Ohio,
Kentucky, West Virginia published in 2007. He was one of the primary editors of
a new book printed by the National Park Service titled Covered Bridges and the
Birth of American Engineering.
He, his wife, and
terrier-mix dog live in Galena, occupying a braced-frame house built in 1836.