Biography of
Charles W. Shaw
p. 1658
CHARLES W. SHAW. The history
of a nation is nothing more than a history of the individuals comprising it,
and as they are characterized by loftier or lower ideals, actuated by the
spirit of ambition or indifference, so it is with a state, county or town.
Success along any line of endeavor would never be properly appreciated if it
came with a single effort and unaccompanied by some hardships, for it is the
knocks and bruises in life that make success taste so sweet. The failures
accentuate the successes, thus making recollections of the former as dear
as those of the latter for having been the stepping-stones to achievement.
The career of Charles W. Shaw,
at the present time trainmaster of the
P. 1659
Illinois Southern Railway at
Sparta, Illinois, is a combination of ambition, brains and a willingness to
work.
Charles W. Shaw came to
Illinois in 1885 from Evansville, Indiana, where he was born on the 12th of
April, 1867. His father, Rev. Joseph W. Shaw, was a Methodist minister and
he passed the major portion of his life time at Evansville, Indiana, where
he was summoned to the life eternal in the year 1873. Rev. Shaw was strictly
a selfmade man. his early educational advantages having been of the most
meager order. He made the most of his opportunities for study, however, and
after being ordained as a minister in the Methodist church, filled a number
of charges and did much effective religious work in southern Indiana.
He was
a son of John Shaw, who brought his family to America from England in an
early day, settling at old Mechanicsburg, now Stringtown, Indiana. The
senior Shaw was a blacksmith by trade and he passed the declining years of
his life in the old Hoosier state, where he lies buried. The Rev. Shaw married Cornelia Clark, who passed to the great beyond in 1871. There were
seven children born to this union and concerning them the following brief
data are here incorporated: Mrs. R. O. Wood is a resident
of Oakland, California; John W. maintains his home at Humboldt, Iowa; Elizabeth is the wife of W. F. lnderhill, of Oakland, California; George H. resides at Cairo, Illinois; Hettie is Mrs, M. H. Bilyer, of Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania; Ruel A. resides at Fort Dodge, Iowa; and
Charles W. is the
immediate subject of this review.
Having been early orphaned,
Charles W. Shaw
was reared to the age of twelve years in the home of an uncle at Evansville,
Indiana, where he attended the public schools. His first employment was with a
local ice company, and when sixteen years of age he came to Illinois, settling
at Cairo, where he secured his first job in the railroad service and where he
was a diligent student in a commercial night school. Through successive
promotions he was engine foreman, yardmaster, conductor, bridge and building
foreman, trainmaster and eventually superintendent of the terminals in
East St. Louis, to which place
he was transferred from Carbondale, Illinois. On the 1st of May, 1911, he
became the efficient and popular incumbent of his present position—that of
trainmaster of the Illinois Southern Railway at Sparta. His railroad service
has extended over a period of twenty-six years, and as he approaches middle
life, rewards for the strenuous service of former years are seeking him in a
substantial way. Mr. Shaw is deeply and sincerely interested in
community affairs, In the time-honored Masonic order he is a valued and
appreciative member of the Chicago Consistory and of Mohammed Temple at Peoria.
He became a Mason on the evening of his twenty-first birthday at Carbondale,
Illinois, where he holds his junior membership.
At Marion, Illinois, on the
7th of February, 1897, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Shaw to
Miss Clara
White, a native of Carbondale, Illinois, and a daughter of Daniel White, who
was long a prominent blacksmith in the latter place. Mrs. Shaw was one in a
family of seven children. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw have two children,
Harry and Edgar, both of whom are now attending school at Sparta.
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