ARVIN BENJAMIN SHAW

SHAW

Posted By: Jake Tornholm (email)
Date: 4/22/2020 at 13:45:10

ARVIN BENJAMIN SHAW is a citizen of Corning, where he is editor and publisher of the Adams county Union, a leading weekly Republican newspaper of southwest Iowa. The Union was established in 1874, aud was purchased January 1,1881, by Mr Shaw, who has been the editor and publisher continuously since that time. It has been built up into one of the best equipped country offices of the State and enjoys a prosperous and uniformly growing patronage. The Union has been the constant advocate of the distinctive principles of the Republican party. Mr. Shaw has served for two years as a member of the Republican State Central Committee of Iowa. He heartily believes in building up manufacturing industries in this
section and therefore in the fostering principle of the protective tariff. Mr. Shaw was secretary of the committee for Adams county which organized to establish the amendment to the constitution prohibiting the saloon in Iowa. The Union has been an earnest advocate of this vital reform. It has a warm interest in stimulating our youth to a Christian education, and endeavors by every means at its command to magnify the happiness and sanctity of the home.

Mr. Shaw is a student of newspaper work; was one of the organizers of the Southwest Iowa Press Association, and has been for five years its secretary and treasurer. A newspaper, properly directed, can be of such service in the up-building, development and advancement of its country and people, and the Union under the present management has endeavored to fulfill this duty. Its publisher was one of the organizers of the “ Blue-grass League of Southwest Iowa,” and of the local Board of Trade by which the former is supported. He has for two years past been secretary of the Corning Board of Trade. He appreciates the value of social and fraternal intercourse, and was one of the organizers of King Arthur Lodge, Knights of Pythias, one of the prosperous orders of the city, and in which he is sitting Past Chancellor.

Mr. Shaw is a native of Iowa, his mother, Almira (Bagley) Shaw, having moved with her parents from the Western Reserve of Ohio to a point between Muscatine and Iowa City, Iowa, in 1837. They named their home West Liberty, and the place has grown into a thrifty young city. His father, Alonzo Shaw, moved from his native place, Tioga county, New York, to the same vicinity, Cedar county, at the age of twenty-one years, in 1844—two years before Iowa entered the Union. He was engaged in making the original Government surveys in north-eastern Iowa. Everything worthy in himself Mr. Shaw attributes to his beloved parents, who still reside at the old home, Tipton, Iowa, where his father has held many positions of honor and trust, and which has been his home ever since the first stakes were driven there in the survey of the plat, with the exception of the years 1866- ’71, when he resided at West Liberty. There has not been a death in the family since the birth of the subject of this sketch. He has a brother, Alfred Frederick, and two sisters, Mrs. Anna Yates and Mrs. Lou M. Hamm. After the manner of the book of .Numbers, it may be said that Alonzo Shaw descended from Alanson Benjamin Shaw; he from Jedediah, and he from Jedediah, Sr., who died about 1800, at old Sheshequin, Bradford
county, Pennsylvania, aged about ninety years. The family tree is traceable back to several brothers who “ came over ” early in the seventeenth century. Benjamin Shaw, born 1641, at Hampton, New Hampshire, was a son of Roger Shaw, who is recorded as taking the oath of “ freeman ” in 1638, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was a representative from New Hampshire in 1652. Another Benjamin Shaw, born in 1705, one of twins, was a son of Benoni (also a twin with a Benjamin Shaw) son of Jonathan, son of John Shaw who lived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1632. He was one of the purchasers of Dartmouth. Edward, Abraham and Robert Shaw were others of the family living in Massachusetts in 1632.

The Shaws formed at one time a Scottish clan, their coat-of-arms being a red lion, fir tree and hand holding a dagger. The subject of this biographical notice entered the State Agricultural College in 1873 and graduated in 1876, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Science, in the department of Civil Engineering. On his return to Tipton he was elected county Surveyor, but soon resigned to enter the newspaper office of his uncle, Hon. B. F. Shaw, of Dixon, Illinois. In 1878-9 he wrote on a history of the lead-mining region of northern Illinois, an octavo volume of 900 pages; also histories of Ogle county, Illinois, Cedar and Linn counties, Iowa. In 1880 he taught in the State Agricultural College, and came to Corning in 1881.

May 17, 1881, he wedded Miss Winifred Dudley, a graduate of the same institution and in the same class, who was a daughter of Mrs. President Welch of that college, and of George E. Dudley, who died in her infancy. Her father was a professor of mathematics in the State Normal School of Michigan and a graduate of Amherst. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw have a model and happy family of two sons and three daughters, namely: Ret. C., born July 14, 1882; Genevieve and Winifred, twins, August 20, 1884; Arvin Benjamin, Jr., February 9, 1889; and Myra Mary,
January 17, 1891.

Mr. Shaw is now combining an active and successful real-estate business with the newspaper work.