Shaw, Frances Wells, 1872-1937

Wealthy Chicago and Lake Forest traveler, poet, and playwright.

Frances Wells Shaw was born in Chicago in 1872. Her mother died when she was an infant, so her father, Moses Wells, a successful shoe manufacturer, sent for a relative to care for her and her older sister. They grew up in a house on Michigan Avenue. Frances Wells was educated at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. In 1893 she married Howard Van Doren Shaw, a long-time family friend and one of Chicago's leading architects. He was later to design many homes in the Hyde Park and Kenwood neighborhoods of Chicago, as well as of Market Square in Lake Forest, where he and Frances Shaw raised a family with three daughters. Frances Wells Shaw and Howard Van Doren Shaw traveled together in the United States and other countries around the world. After his death in 1926, she resumed her travels, alone, going even farther from home-to the Far East. She traveled by motor car, by bus, by railroad, on cruise ships, by freight packet (down the Mississippi River), and by donkey (up Mt. Aetna). Her adventurous and interesting travels made her a well known speaker on travel topics in Chicago clubs. Many of her verses were published in Poetry magazine. She was the author of several plays. She died in 1937.