Originally part of New Fairfield, which was purchased from the Indians in 1729, the area then known as the Upper Seven Miles was separately incorporated as the Town of Sherman in 1802. The town was named for Roger Sherman, who as a young man had a cobbler shop at the north end and later became the only statesman to help draft and sign the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. Sherman was also the native town of Philo Penfield Stewart, a missionary to the Choctaw Indians, inventor of the Stewart stove, and a founder of Oberlin College in Ohio in 1833. Its character as a farming community devoted to dairying, grazing, and tobacco-growing changed after 1926, when eight hundred acres of Sherman land were flooded to create Lake Candlewood for hydroelectric power.