Pauline Agassiz Shaw

Philanthropist, suffragist, education reformer

McGrath-Sherrill Press

Quick Facts

Significance:

Philanthropist, suffragist, education reformer

Place of Birth:

Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Date of Birth:

February 6, 1841

Place of Death:

Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

February 10, 1917

Place of Burial:

Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Forest Hills Cemetery

Known for her generous philanthropy, Pauline Agassiz Shaw invested in education, immigrant communities, reform groups, and women’s suffrage. Supporting more than 30 schools in addition to social service institutions in the Greater Boston area, Shaw “put something better than money into her work: she put her heart and soul into it.”¹

Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on February 6, 1841, Pauline Agassiz lived with her parents, Louis Agassiz and Cecile Braun, and two older siblings, Alexander and Ida. Following the death of her mother in 1848, Pauline and her siblings stayed in Switzerland with relatives while their father lectured in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard College and the Lowell Institute. In 1850, the Agassiz children ultimately moved to the United States to be with their father, following his appointment as a professor at Harvard. Pauline finished her schooling in Cambridge.²

At nineteen years old, Pauline Agassiz married Quincy Adams Shaw on November 30, 1860.³ Quincy Adams Shaw led Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, which operated copper mines in the Midwest. Working with Pauline’s brother, Alexander Agassiz, Shaw built a copper mining empire from the region’s abundant natural resources and the labor of hardworking Michigan miners. Shaw soon became one of the richest men in Boston. The Shaw family’s amassed wealth allowed Pauline to start and support charitable institutions in Boston.⁴

Pauline Agassiz Shaw began her work in education reform by financially supporting Elizabeth Peabody’s school, the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. She became invested in kindergarten education, opening two charity kindergartens of her own in Jamaica Plain and Brookline in 1877.⁵ Schools in other places around Boston shortly followed, and she financed every aspect—supplies, salaries, and maintenance. Between 1882 and 1889, Shaw supported 31 different schools, spending more than $200,000 doing so. In 1888, Shaw successfully persuaded the Boston School Committee to make an investigation into a public kindergarten system. Shortly thereafter, as a result, they integrated 14 of her kindergartens into the Boston Public School system.⁶ A pioneer of children’s education, Shaw became “known as the foster-mother of the Kindergarten system of Boston.”⁷

Additionally, Shaw wanted to help parents and pre-school aged children by opening and supporting day nurseries. The first started in 1877 along with her kindergarten, and others soon followed. Shaw saw great value in holistically supporting families; her kindergartens also held Mothers’ Meetings and Parents’ Clubs.⁸

In addition to supporting education for the youngest of society, Shaw worked on initiatives for industrial training. Shaw’s Industrial School at North Bennet Street in Boston’s North End opened in 1881.⁹ Her institutions had no limitations—her work provided the large, working-class immigrant community with essential job training. The North Bennet Industrial School introduced innovative educational methods such as Sloyd training, a handicraft-based education from Sweden. Shaw later opened another training school dedicated to the practice.¹⁰

Shaw continued to aid Boston’s immigrant community at a time when the city maintained one of the largest ports for immigration to the United States, second only to Ellis Island in New York. Opened in 1901, Shaw’s Civic Service House provided essential social services to newly arrived Jewish, Italian, Irish, and Polish immigrants in the North End. One of many settlement houses that she established, the Civic Service House helped families as they sought “a foothold on new soil.”¹¹

While her other work supported women in many ways, Shaw only entered the suffrage movement in the 1890s after being invited to a suffrage meeting in Brookline.¹² She quickly became the largest financial contributor to the Massachusetts suffrage cause and also financed suffrage efforts in Western states.¹³ Her donations helped save The Woman’s Journal from ceasing publication multiple times.¹⁴ Additionally, Shaw funded Maud Wood Park’s international travels to study women across the globe.¹⁵

As Shaw supported key suffrage organizations through her philanthropy, she also worked behind the scenes as a leader in Boston’s suffrage movement. Alongside Fanny B. Ames, Mary Hutcheson Page, and Maud Wood Park, Shaw organized the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government (BESAGG) in 1901. She became its first president and served in the position for 16 years.¹⁶

In 1902, Shaw wrote a letter to be read at a Massachusetts Legislative hearing on equal suffrage. In it, she passionately called on true gender equality: 

Men and women are trying to find a way that shall lead to the greatest welfare of both. How can that be done without mutual cooperation and mutual service in public matters as well as private? Gentlemen, we need more of a man’s service in the home, and we need the ballot for woman to complete public service, for all private service in the end must lead to public service, or the service of mankind.¹⁷

Shaw’s overwhelming commitment to public service connected all her work across social reform movements. 

After contracting pneumonia, Shaw passed away on February 10, 1917, at her home in Jamaica Plain.¹⁸ On the Easter Sunday following her death, Bostonians honored her life and work during memorial services held at Faneuil Hall. Maud Wood Park spoke about Shaw on behalf of her devotion to the suffrage cause. Park reflected: 

In our work, as in her other activities, she had a far-seeing vision combined with an extraordinary attention to details. She eagerly shared in every feature of our work, never excusing herself from the smaller services because they were small, nor because of the heavier burden that she was carrying. While she had the power to see forward to the thing that was going to develop into something useful, she had the other power of communicating her spirit to others and making us all wish to follow and be like her.¹⁹

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Footnotes

1. Pauline Agassiz Shaw is mapped at her and Quincy Adams Shaw's home on Perkins Street in Jamaica Plain, Boston. Boston Globe, June 13, 1908, 10.
2. National American Woman Suffrage Association. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: Subject File, -1953; Shaw, Pauline Agassiz. - 1953, 1851. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss3413201906/.; Pauline Agassiz Shaw ; tributes paid her memory at the memorial service held on Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917, at Faneuil Hall, Boston, (Boston: McGrath-Sherrill Press, 1917) https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.HXT9JG. 
3. Quincy Adams Shaw was the fraternal uncle of Robert Gould Shaw, Colonel of the 54^th Massachusetts Regiment. Pauline Agassiz Shaw ; tributes paid her memory at the memorial service held on Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917, at Faneuil Hall, Boston, 11. 
4. National Park Service, "Alexander Agassiz" Alexander Agassiz (U.S. National Park Service); National Park Service, "Calumet Unit - Keweenaw," Calumet Unit - Keweenaw National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)
5. Barbara Beatty, Preschool Education in America: the Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 74, Archive.org. 
6. Barbara Beatty, 74. 
7. Boston Globe, June 13, 1908, 10.
8. Pauline Agassiz Shaw ; tributes paid her memory at the memorial service held on Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917, at Faneuil Hall, Boston, 34.
9. Polly Welts Kaufman, Boston Women and City School Politics, 1872-1905, (New York: Garland Pub., 1994), Introduction, Archive.org. 
10. Boston Globe, September 21, 1897, 2; North Bennet Street School, "Founder's Day, Part II: Sloyd & Training The Whole Person," Founder's Day, Part II: Sloyd & Training The Whole Person - North Bennet Street School.
11. Pauline Agassiz Shaw ; tributes paid her memory at the memorial service held on Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917, at Faneuil Hall, Boston, 78.
12. National American Woman Suffrage Association. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: Subject File, -1953; Shaw, Pauline Agassiz. - 1953, 1851. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss3413201906/.; National American Woman Suffrage Association. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: Subject File, -1953; Shaw, Pauline Agassiz. - 1953, 1851. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss3413201906/.
13. National American Woman Suffrage Association. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: Subject File, -1953; Shaw, Pauline Agassiz. - 1953, 1851. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss3413201906/.
14. Sharon Hartman Strom, “Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts,” The Journal of American History 62, no. 2 (1975): 301, https://doi.org/10.2307/1903256.
15. Sharon Hartman Strom, “Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts,” The Journal of American History 62, no. 2 (1975): 303, https://doi.org/10.2307/1903256.
16. Sharon Hartman Strom, 301; Pauline Agassiz Shaw ; tributes paid her memory at the memorial service held on Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917, at Faneuil Hall, Boston, 56.
17. Woman's Journal, February 1, 1902, 34. 
18. Boston Globe, February 8, 1917, 3. 
19. Pauline Agassiz Shaw ; tributes paid her memory at the memorial service held on Easter Sunday, April 8, 1917, at Faneuil Hall, Boston, 57.
20. National American Woman Suffrage Association. National American Woman Suffrage Association Records: Subject File, -1953; Shaw, Pauline Agassiz. - 1953, 1851. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss3413201906/.