Robert Gould Shaw II

Early life

RGS II was the youngest child of Quincy Adams Shaw and Pauline (née Agassiz) Shaw. Quincy was one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts as a result of his investment in the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. RGS II's four older siblings were Louis, Pauline, Marian, and Quincy Jr. They divorced and remarried to divorcée and club singer Margaret Graham Vogel Shaw (née Townsend) and had one child: Alexander Agassiz Shaw (1951-). She died in 1951 of a throat virus at 29. Married thirdly and lastly to Brazilian Rita Shaw (née Garcia) and moved to Brazil. Died of cardiac arrest in Recife, Brazil. Alexander Agassiz Shaw (1905-1967) Married first to Helen Shaw (née Ellsworth) and had one child: Robert Gould Shaw IV (1928-2021). They quickly divorced that same year and he later remarried to Dianne Shaw (née Duncan) who had a daughter Phyllis from a previous marriage. Died in Topsfield, Massachusetts. Louis Agassiz Shaw II (1906–1987) Died unmarried and without children at McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts. Paul Agassiz Shaw (1912–1983) World War Two Veteran, Investor, and Livestock Breeder. Married first to Elizabeth "Betty" Shaw (née Pope) and had children: Paul Agassiz Shaw Jr., Robert Gould Shaw V., and Frederic Patrick Shaw. After Elizabeth's death, he later married June Shaw (née Battles). Died in Naples, Florida.

Shaw purchased a tract of land in Oak Hill, Newton, shortly after the death of its owner, William Sumner Appleton in 1903 (father of William Sumner Appleton Jr.). He commissioned Boston architect James Lovell Little Jr. to design and construct several buildings on the property, including outbuildings of a carriage house and horse stable in 1910,

Shaw died at the Plaza Hotel after a brief illness in 1930.

Legacy Robert Gould Shaw II as "Little Billee" from the novel Trilby, by R. G. Harper Pennington The vacant and decaying Shaw estate in Newton was sold in 1939 to Dr. William Fitts Carlson. Carlson used the property as the new campus for Mount Ida Junior College. Adjoining tracts of land were converted into the Wells Avenue office park in the 1970s, and the Charles River Footpath (since renamed the Helen Heyn Riverway) in the 1990s.