Robert Gould Shaw II
{{Short description|American landowner and socialite (1872–1930)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2023}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Robert Gould Shaw II
| image = File:Robert Gould Shaw II.jpg
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1872|6|16|mf=yes}}
| birth_place = Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1930|3|29|1872|6|16|mf=yes}}
| death_place = New York City, New York, U.S.
| burial_place = Forest Hills Cemetery, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, U.S.
| occupation = Landowner, socialite
| spouse = {{plainlist|
- {{marriage|Nancy Witcher Langhorne|October 27, 1897|1903|reason=div}}
- {{marriage|Mary Hannington|1903||end=}}
}}
| parents = Quincy Adams Shaw
Pauline Agassiz
| children = 5, including Robert III and Louis
| signature = Robert Gould Shaw 2d signature.png
}}
Robert Gould Shaw II (sometimes referred to as RGS II) (June 16, 1872 – March 29, 1930) was a wealthy landowner, international polo player of the Myopia Hunt Club and socialite in the greater Boston area of Massachusetts. He was one of the prominent figures of the boom years at the turn of the century, sometimes called the Gilded Age.Biographical History of Massachusetts, Eliot, Vol. IX
Born in 1872 into one of the wealthiest and most influential families in Boston, he was a first cousin of Civil War soldier Robert Gould Shaw. As an adult, RGS II gained a reputation for alcohol abuse and promiscuity. His first wife was Nancy Witcher Langhorne, and they had a son, Robert Gould Shaw III (called RGS III or "Bobby"). RGS II and Langhorne divorced after four years of marriage. She moved to England after some time, where she met and married Waldorf Astor, who later succeeded his father as Viscount. RGS II married again and had four other sons, including Louis Agassiz Shaw II.
Early life
File:Quincy Adams Shaw.jpg, father of RGS II]]
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.
Quincy's side of the family had Anglo-American roots extending back to passengers on the Mayflower. His paternal grandparents were Robert G. Shaw and Elizabeth Willard (née Parkman) Shaw. His maternal grandfather, Louis Agassiz, was a prominent paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist, and scholar of the Earth's natural history who immigrated from Switzerland in 1846.
Shaw's relatives included granduncle George Parkman, first cousin (once removed) Francis Parkman, uncle Alexander Emanuel Agassiz, cousin Rodolphe L. Agassiz, cousin Josephine Shaw Lowell, and nephew Louis Agassiz Shaw Jr.
Personal life
{{multiple image
| footer = Nancy Witcher Langhorne (left), first wife of RGS II, and their son Robert Gould Shaw III (right)
| image1 = Nancy Viscountess Astor by John Singer Sargent.jpeg
| width1 = 131
| image2 = Robert Gould Shaw III.jpg
| width2 = 149
| align = right
}}
On October 27, 1897, RGS II married Nancy Witcher Langhorne (1879–1964) in New York City. She was the 18-year-old daughter of railroad millionaire Chiswell Dabney Langhorne and Nancy Witcher Keene. They had one son:
The marriage was unhappy for both and Shaw's friends accused her of being puritanical and rigid, while Nancy's friends contended that he was an alcoholic and a womanizer. Nancy left Shaw numerous times during their brief marriage, the first time during their honeymoon. In 1903, Nancy's mother died and she divorced him, returning to Mirador, her childhood home. After his ex-wife and son moved to England, Shaw had a limited role in his son Bobby's life.
In 1905, while a passenger on a trans-Atlantic ship to England, the recently divorced Nancy met Waldorf Astor, eldest son of William Waldorf Astor and Mary Dahlgren Paul of the Astor family. The couple were married in May 1906, settling in Cliveden, a present from his father and the Astor family estate in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, England. In 1919, Nancy ran for Parliament and won, becoming the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons.
=Second marriage=
Shaw was married to Mary Hannington (1874–1937) and they had four sons:Biographical History of Massachusetts, Eliot, Vol. IX.
- Gould Agassiz Shaw (1904-1955) Married three times. First to Hilda Shaw (née Burt) and had two children: Penelope Gould "Penny" Shaw (1925-)and Yolande Agassiz Shaw (1931-~1960).https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/16943699:2442 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.https://www.newspapers.com/image/869831988/?article=11873d6d-84b0-4769-9059-fc88e051c302&xid=5507&terms=Margaret_Graham_Townsend&_gl=1*gnfk6s*_gcl_au*MTUzNDQzOTA5NS4xNzI5MDk2OTk4*_ga*MTcxMTYwOTExMi4xNzI5MDk3MDAw*_ga_4QT8FMEX30*ODU0YzQ4MWEtNjJmYi00YTNmLTg4M2ItNzc2ZDZmZTM0ZTBmLjIwLjEuMTczMDM4NDYxMC41OS4wLjA.*_ga_LMK6K2LSJH*ODU0YzQ4MWEtNjJmYi00YTNmLTg4M2ItNzc2ZDZmZTM0ZTBmLjIwLjEuMTczMDM4NDYxMC4wLjAuMA.. Married thirdly and lastly to Brazilian Rita Shaw (née Garcia) and moved to Brazil.https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/4470438:9800 Died of cardiac arrest in Recife, Brazil.https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/156046:1616
- Alexander Agassiz Shaw (1905-1967) Married first to Helen Shaw (née Ellsworth) and had one child: Robert Gould Shaw IV (1928-2021). https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/16777589:6224 They quickly divorced that same year and he later remarried to Dianne Shaw (née Duncan) who had a daughter Phyllis from a previous marriage. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/195919905:2238 Died in Topsfield, Massachusetts.
- Louis Agassiz Shaw II (1906–1987) Died unmarried and without children at McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts.{{cite news |title=Massachusetts Man Seized in Strangling Of Maid on Estate |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/04/09/archives/massachusetts-man-seized-in-strangling-of-maid-on-estate.html |accessdate=June 29, 2020 |work=The New York Times |date=April 9, 1964}}
- 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.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/799040074/?article=43c714ae-9dd8-48b4-ad2f-1ab28866523c&focus=0.5027833,0.31731057,0.6252696,0.64872515&xid=3355&_gl=1*sf72sw*_gcl_au*MTUzNDQzOTA5NS4xNzI5MDk2OTk4*_ga*MTcxMTYwOTExMi4xNzI5MDk3MDAw*_ga_4QT8FMEX30*ODU0YzQ4MWEtNjJmYi00YTNmLTg4M2ItNzc2ZDZmZTM0ZTBmLjE2LjEuMTczMDMwNDQ4MS40NC4wLjA.*_ga_LMK6K2LSJH*ODU0YzQ4MWEtNjJmYi00YTNmLTg4M2ItNzc2ZDZmZTM0ZTBmLjE2LjEuMTczMDMwNDQ4MS4wLjAuMA.. |title=Paul Agassiz Shaw |newspaper=Naples Daily News |date=January 20, 1983 |access-date=October 30, 2024}}
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, a cow barn in 1912, and a primary residence (the Appleton/Shaw House) in 1912. As the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era and eventually the Great Depression, the Shaw fortune collapsed.{{cite web|last=Shaw|first=Colin Gould|title=Robert Gould Shaw II|publisher=Newton Conservators Inc.|location=Newton, Massachusetts|date=December 2005|url=http://www.newtonconservators.org/shawletter.htm|accessdate=July 3, 2011}}
Shaw died at the Plaza Hotel after a brief illness in 1930.{{cite news |title=ROBERT G. SHAW 2D DIES HERE AT 59; First Husband of Lady Astor Succumbs to Pneumonia at the Plaza. NOTED AS A SPORTSMAN Distinguished Himself as Poloist-- Became ill on His Arrival in City on Wednesday. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1930/03/30/archives/robert-g-shaw-2d-dies-here-at-59-first-husband-of-lady-astor.html |accessdate=June 29, 2020 |work=The New York Times |date=March 30, 1930}}
Legacy
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.
=In popular culture=
Artist R. G. Harper Pennington in one of his paintings depicted a nude RGS II as the character "Little Billee" from the bohemian novel Trilby (1894) by George du Maurier. This painting hung in the bedroom of Henry Symes Lehr, the homosexual husband of Elizabeth Wharton Drexel.
In a 1982 episode of Masterpiece Theatre that chronicled the life of Nancy Astor, Pierce Brosnan portrayed RGS II as a profligate and promiscuous gambler. In this version, Nancy Langhorne Astor continued to love RGS II after her marriage to Waldorf Astor, but this has not been documented. For this performance, Brosnan was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor in 1985.{{cite web|author=IMDb.com|title=Awards for Pierce Brosnan|work=Pierce Brosnan|publisher=Internet Movie Database|year=2011|url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000112/awards|accessdate=July 3, 2011}}
References
{{Reflist|colwidth=30em|refs=
{{cite book|editor=G.E. Cokayne|editor2=Vicary Gibbs|editor3=H.A. Doubleday|editor4=Geoffrey H. White|editor5=Duncan Warrand|editor6=Lord Howard de Walden|title=The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant|volume=XIII:Peers created 1901 to 1938|pages=215–6|location=Gloucester, United Kingdom|publisher=Alan Sutton Publishing|year=2000}}
{{cite web|author=The Harvard Education and Research Center for Occupational Safety and Health
|title=2010-2011 Student Handbook|publisher=The Harvard Education and Research Center for Occupational Safety and Health|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|year=2010|url=http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/erc/files/no_whoswho_editsept10updates.pdf|accessdate=July 2, 2011}}
}}
External links
{{commons category}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20120320065927/http://www.ci.newton.ma.us/MIS/Gis/1886/pages/Atlas1886-025_jpg.htm City of Newton Massachusetts Atlas (1886): Section V, Ward 5]. The location of the tract of land purchased by Robert Gould Shaw II in 1903 (property owned by William Sumner Appleton) is clearly visible on this 1886 map of Newton, Massachusetts.
- {{cite web|last=Snoots|first=Jen|title=Robert Gould Shaw, II (Memorial# 23098611)|work=Find a Grave|location=Salt Lake City, Utah|date=November 25, 2007|url=https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23098611|accessdate=July 3, 2011}}
- {{cite web|author=IMDb.com|title=Full cast and crew for "Masterpiece Theatre: Nancy Astor"|work=Masterpiece Theatre: Nancy Astor|publisher=Internet Movie Database|year=2011|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086766/fullcredits#cast|accessdate=July 3, 2011}}
- {{cite web|author=IMDb.com|title=Awards for Pierce Brosnan|work=Pierce Brosnan|publisher=Internet Movie Database|year=2011|url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000112/awards|accessdate=July 3, 2011}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw, Robert Gould II}}
Category:19th-century American people
Category:American people of Swiss descent