Shaw, Sarah Blake Sturgis, 1815-1902.

Sarah Shaw was the wife of Francis George Shaw, a prominent philanthropist and reformer of Boston and West Roxbury, Mass., and Staten Island, N.Y. The Shaws were the parents of Robert Gould Shaw, Civil War soldier and colonel of the first black regiment to serve with the Union Army.

Sarah Blake Shaw was the wife of philanthropist, social reformer, and abolitionist, Francis George Shaw (1809-1882) and the mother of Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863), colonel of the all-black 54th Massachusetts Regiment. Her son died at the age of 26 at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, and was immortalized in a statue by Augustus John of him leading his troops. She and her husband were friends to a host of writers and reformers including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.