Will was a quiet-about-it Christian follower of Jesus all of his life whose original birth name was William Judson Pringle Shaw. He was the great- great-grandson of John Shaw, his immigrant ancestor. He was baptized at age 12 as "Will J. P. Shaw" (see photo of the certificate) by Rev. C. C. Brown May 4, 1903 at First Baptist Church, Sumter, S. C. (his mother being a Pringle & Dr. Pringle, little Will's maternal grandfather still living & the Pringle's being staunch Baptists, he had his baptism at that Baptist church rather than his father's Presbyterian church.).
Will's mother died when he was about 10. In high school, he was dating Lucia Williamson who was from a staunch Methodist family & would marry into that staunch Methodist Church family. Will was due to deliver the declamation address for his graduating high school class of 1909 (https://www.edmundshigh.com/alumni.html?x=info&c=09). His father caught typhoid fever (no antibiotics yet invented) & died the day before graduation. Will was orphaned thereby & left with a younger brother and a large farm to run with farm store & cotton gin. His kin at Shaws Crossroad & the Williamson family surely provided a lot of help & advice. In 1910 Will married Lucia & started the first non-Presbyterian Shaw line in Sumter. The wedding newspaper write-up, first sentence: "One of the most beautiful church weddings ever seen by Sumter people took on Tuesday evening at First Methodist Church..." His younger brother would marry into a staunch Baptist family.
He was likely born across the highway at his Uncle Willie (W. B.) Shaw's home (as was Will's younger brother, Jim). Will was educated in the public schools of the city of Sumter (graduating boys high school class of 1909 [only 10 grades until 1914 when 11th was added]; see class (http://www.theeffectivetruth.info/SHS1909.html) and Sumter schools history (http://www.edmundshigh.com/schoolhistory.html). And see him in this other Sumter High School (boys) class of 1909 pic.
Football teams: The Sumter Military Academy team of 1901 is HERE; the 1902 team is HERE. He was a member of the Sumter High School football team of 1906 (http://www.edmundshigh.com/0609.html)...thought to be the first public high school team in the state in this new, exciting sport (In the 1957 HiWays yearbook of Edmunds High School [on page 110] is a Homecoming Reunion picture of members of the Sumter High Football team of 1906). And he was a football all state left halfback and captain of the Sumter High School football team of 1908 (see pic) which was unbeaten and not even scored upon and also defeated the USC "scrub" team. HERE is the 1910 football team on the E. D. Shaw memorial. A pic of his Sumter High School class of 1909 boys high school classmates (and links to other old SHS class graduates in the photo caption), HERE.
Orphaned: See above. His mother had died 8 years before. Will was chosen to give the important declamation speech at his high school graduation. However, his daddy totally unexpectedly died at age 48 the day before graduation of a brief episode of what was thought to be typhoid fever, leaving him & his young brother orphaned. There he was left suddenly with his father's farm, store, and cotton gin operation to run!
College: He was the 1st of his Shaw line to try to go to college (Davidson: a male college where he was admitted & then hid & camped in the woods at night to avoid the hazing & shortly left for home). He may have then attempted USC briefly. He returned home; and he married Lucia the next summer, June 28, 1910.
Church: Though likely spending much time in First Baptist Church with the Pringle family, Will was the first Sumter area Shaw to leave the Presbyterian Church denomination as an adult, his 18 year old wife's family being Methodist. Will served many years on the Board of Stewards of Trinity Methodist Church in Sumter, as well as treasurer of its Sunday School Building Fund. Will & the families of his 2 sons were Methodists...the only Sumter Shaws who were not Presbyterians. On June 4th, 2023, his only grandson, Dr. Ervin B. Shaw & his wife, Betty Drafts Shaw, joined Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church in Lexington, S. C. & closed the loop back into Sumter Shaws all being Presbyterian.
WWI & WWII: He was not in the military of WWI because his wife was an invalid, and he had 2 young boys at home on the farm. However, he was a member of what was known as the "Home Guard". During WWII, Will was the head of the Rationing Board of Sumter County (the photo of an award for this local service is image #133687383 on Will's memorial). Another indication of his patriotic dedication to the people of our USA military in WWII was as a teacher for the Sunday Shaw AFB Adult Bible Class is noted in this newspaper clipping photo (image #133692221 on Will's memorial) & this appreciation folder (image #133688147 on Will's memorial).
Black neighbor, "Aunt" Sallie White, was vital motherly help to Will's two boys as well as Carol & Annie May by/during his second marriage. The memories I have are from back in the racial segregation days. The customs were so very odd. Strangers came to the front door & knocked (no blacks to the front door). Friends, kin, and your black "family" came to the back door. Tuomey Hospital had separate wings for blacks and whites as well as a small separate are for "Turks". There were separate public water fountains, but your black family cook did your cooking (but ate in another room). Though a farmer with store and seasonal cotton gin to run, he had one of the first automobile dealerships in Sumter...a great success (Eastern Carolina Motor Co. [see stock certificate photo on Will's memorial])! In those days, he'd have to take a gang of men to Detroit via unmarked roads (no real highway marker system until it began after 1926) & buy & drive the cars back to the dealership.
Will sold some land on the eastern side of Alligator Branch to "Uncle Johnny" Shaw who was Pres. & Mgr. of Shaw & McCollum Mercantile Co., dry goods and shoe sales, at 13 S. Main St. for $10,000 to help with medical expenses and to buy 312 North Salem Avenue as a town home. But Will lost the car business (and his wife died a couple months later) between 1921-1923 following the cotton depression of 1920. His brother, Jim, and Jim's wife Kathleen moved in to help care for the young boys. Later he hired a "Miss Maggy" Jackson from Rhems, S. C. until he married Bertha in Jan. 1922.
He subsequently sold cars at Sumter Buick. They moved back to Shaw's Crossroads farm in 1924 and had a dairy business. Bertha's sisters stayed with them during summers, and about 4 children from Epworth Orphanage stayed one summer. In 1926, they moved back to 312 N. Salem in town, and he and Hal Harby formed Sumter Motor Company about 1926 on the NW corner of Sumter and Hampton Streets [financed by Hal's dad [Henry], Will having the business "know how"). Sumter Motor Company folded in 1929-30 with onset of The Great Depression. Since all cars bought in Detroit were bought with cash (and not financed), there was no bankruptcy protection. Customers owed him but now had no money to pay. Will mortgaged the farm for $20,000. But, business debts and personal debt from his deceased wife's medical downhill course to death cost him the loss of the old Bartow Shaw home, farm, store, and cotton gin. Will swapped 312 North Salem and got some land from Uncle Willie Shaw and built a home around the Shaws Crossroad corner on Brewington Road next to cousin Ed & Mell Pringle. He got a job with Mr. John Steadman as a government appraiser. And he became a bookkeeper for Boyle Motor Company.
During the Great Depression, the welfare department would pay $25 per month to a family to take in a baby. Will & Bertha had as many as 6 (one, Robert, is buried in their cemetery plot) at a time. They adopted one such baby, Carol, in 1931.
Clubs: He was a member of the Ramsey Grove Hunt Club near Georgetown, S. C., as well as the Cain's Mill Club in Sumter County. Will joined the Sumter Rotary Club in Sumter in June 1945, and he (as a voting delegate) and Bertha took a train trip to the June 8-12, 1947, annual national convention in San Francisco. The train trip began in Goldsboro, N. C. & picked them up in Columbia, S. C. on the first of June. Will & Bertha kept a scrap book of the trip which had stops for scheduled sight-seeing in New Orleans, through Houston to San Antonio, El Paso, Grand Canyon, Los Angeles and arriving midday in San Francisco June 8. The return trip began June 12 through Reno to Salt Lake City. Then it went to Denver to Colorado Springs with a tour to include Pikes Peak. On June 16, they arrived in Kansas City for tours, leaving that evening for St. Louis & tours there. On the afternoon of the 18th, they were back in Columbia. When the Sumter Rotary Club moved its meeting place to the Elks Club (SE corner of Broad St. & Salem Ave.), Will dropped his membership (he was so opposed to alcohol). Will was a Mason and member of Claremont Lodge #64. Will & Bertha were both members of Beuclare Chapter #93 of the Order of the Eastern Star from April 1942-March 1946. He was also a member of Woodmen of the World.
Vacations: The earliest that I (oldest grandson) remember were to the Smokey Mountains (they often took me with them as a small boy). Others were the whole family going to a rental house at Cherry Grove Beach, S. C., near North Carolina (this would set a beach going habit that son Ervin & grandson Ervin, Jr. would do in their lifetimes). Then, in about 1955, he and his two sons built the two-story concrete-block house at Retreat Beach which later became North Litchfield Beach (as of 2015, that beach house still stands...with modifications..at #9 Media Lane). By that time each family used that house for separate vacations.
My "Gran'daddy" was known by that name to us grandchildren, to nieces & nephews as "Uncle Will", to wife & friends as "Will", "Daddy Will" to daughters-in-law, & "Daddy" to his children. They had the farm at Shaw's Crossroads and the house and lot at 312 North Salem Ave. in Sumter. They lost the farm due to debt over the expenses of his wife, Lucia, at Johns Hopkins during the last two years of her life (1919-21) followed by the cotton depression and then the Great depression.
Will's son, my Daddy (Ervin), always told me that, growing up, it seemed to him that they lived on the farm when times were hard and in town during good times. Ervin also admired the fact that "Gran'daddy's" strategy for farming was to plant early ("pushing" the season) so that he'd have the very early crop to sell, almost always at a higher price (the demand was highest then).
At the new Brewington Road home, he farmed and had about 30 dairy cows, plus pigs and chickens, and chopped and sold oak for kindling. In 1939, son Ervin (who'd been away as a salesman) moved back; and they had a 1000-chickens chicken-egg business which they managed together. When son Ervin left for WWII, there was not enough help anymore. The Crossroads place was sold, and Will & Bertha moved to 437 West Hampton Avenue in Sumter. Will became a book keeper for Boyle Motor Company and continued some farming. During WWII, Will was the head of the Rationing Board of Sumter County. When WWII ended, Will went to work with Booth-Boyle Livestock Company selling farm equipment. And Will created Booth Motor Company (one-third owners being Shaw, Booth, and Nelson). They lived for awhile on Charlotte Ave. Their last residence before nursing homes was #3 Warren Court.
Civic Duties: An act of the S. C. legislature created school boards, and Will was persuaded (along with Blanding Upshur) to serve as prominent county farmers on the first Board for Sumter in 1932 and served at least through 1941 (a Board group photo is on the first page of the Edmunds High School yearbook of 1941 and photo, HERE (on R. K. Wilder's memorial)). He served with the Schools Superintendent, William Henry Shaw, Sr. (no kinship at all) in 1939-44. And HERE he is in the 1944 school board picture (on Dr. C. J. Lemmon's memorial). I had his metal Notary Public seal stamper. When Mr. Edwin Boyle was national president of Fishers' of Men, Will served as Treasurer. He left that last Motor Company when Mr. John Duffy died; and then he was appointed Sumter Co. Auditor on 2 Nov. 1948 (appointed by state senator H. B. "Punch" Richardson) & held office until he had a bad stroke.
Stroke: On 9 September 1957 (age 66-67), he suffered a bad stroke which knocked out his whole right side and 90% of his ability to speak (a churchman and highly respected man in the community). He was about 90% invalid for 15 years, & someone in the family took him out for a ride nearly every day of those 15 years. He died at Hopewell Nursing Home on the Pinewood Road not far from Cain's Mill.
Race Relations, black family: My mother remembers "Gran'daddy" telling about how the white's and blacks coped together with the post-civil-war times as a segregated but admixed and closely interdependent small rural cross-roads community of good will at Shaw's Crossroad in Sumter County (Will's father, Bartow, had experienced all of that coping as well as heard things about those times from his own dad who fought in that War Between the States & died at age 44, when Bartow was also about 18 years old). "Aunt Sallie" White, above (paragraph #4), was a key person in the family. Later, when daughter Annie May was older, Annie May rememberred Marie as their cook. Gran'daddy & his two son's went together when I was little & had about a 50 acre place a few miles out the Camden highway and share-cropped with Sam Cantey and his family.
Daddy (Ervin) gave me most of the above information in 1974. Will always tried to treat all four children equally. Like almost all Shaws in the area, he was an upright, law-abiding man. The Shaws were known to be tight with their money, punctual, and exacting in their expectations and how they did things. While some (such as Will) were public spirited, most were private and with a "live and let live" approach to life...tending to their own business and seldom coming across as attempting to mind anyone else's business. Daddy (Ervin) told me that he was not aware of any dominant, guiding purpose or goal that Gran'daddy had for his life or his family. And, Ervin opined that his daddy would probably say that he was most proud of his work with the church.
Burial: On 30 June 1921, Will paid $200 for Sumter Cemetery Association perpetual care certificate #534 for one 16-grave cemetery lot which is known as "Will J. Shaw lot no. 428". It was certified for 16 burials & had a registered deed for $35. The perpetual care certificate was $200. I have no idea who burial #9, Robert, is. Don Pigate posted a Find a Grave memorial indicating the infant as Robert Hinson.
Sayings:
(1) "He is climbing fool's hill" was his comment when someone complained about young males and their behavior.
Link: I have a "Coming to America" story of Will's Shaw immigrant great-great grandfather's (John Shaw) landing in Charleston, S. C. in 1772 posted here, http://www.theeffectivetruth.info/bigstory.html.
Will's mother died when he was about 10. In high school, he was dating Lucia Williamson who was from a staunch Methodist family & would marry into that staunch Methodist Church family. Will was due to deliver the declamation address for his graduating high school class of 1909 (https://www.edmundshigh.com/alumni.html?x=info&c=09). His father caught typhoid fever (no antibiotics yet invented) & died the day before graduation. Will was orphaned thereby & left with a younger brother and a large farm to run with farm store & cotton gin. His kin at Shaws Crossroad & the Williamson family surely provided a lot of help & advice. In 1910 Will married Lucia & started the first non-Presbyterian Shaw line in Sumter. The wedding newspaper write-up, first sentence: "One of the most beautiful church weddings ever seen by Sumter people took on Tuesday evening at First Methodist Church..." His younger brother would marry into a staunch Baptist family.
He was likely born across the highway at his Uncle Willie (W. B.) Shaw's home (as was Will's younger brother, Jim). Will was educated in the public schools of the city of Sumter (graduating boys high school class of 1909 [only 10 grades until 1914 when 11th was added]; see class (http://www.theeffectivetruth.info/SHS1909.html) and Sumter schools history (http://www.edmundshigh.com/schoolhistory.html). And see him in this other Sumter High School (boys) class of 1909 pic.
Football teams: The Sumter Military Academy team of 1901 is HERE; the 1902 team is HERE. He was a member of the Sumter High School football team of 1906 (http://www.edmundshigh.com/0609.html)...thought to be the first public high school team in the state in this new, exciting sport (In the 1957 HiWays yearbook of Edmunds High School [on page 110] is a Homecoming Reunion picture of members of the Sumter High Football team of 1906). And he was a football all state left halfback and captain of the Sumter High School football team of 1908 (see pic) which was unbeaten and not even scored upon and also defeated the USC "scrub" team. HERE is the 1910 football team on the E. D. Shaw memorial. A pic of his Sumter High School class of 1909 boys high school classmates (and links to other old SHS class graduates in the photo caption), HERE.
Orphaned: See above. His mother had died 8 years before. Will was chosen to give the important declamation speech at his high school graduation. However, his daddy totally unexpectedly died at age 48 the day before graduation of a brief episode of what was thought to be typhoid fever, leaving him & his young brother orphaned. There he was left suddenly with his father's farm, store, and cotton gin operation to run!
College: He was the 1st of his Shaw line to try to go to college (Davidson: a male college where he was admitted & then hid & camped in the woods at night to avoid the hazing & shortly left for home). He may have then attempted USC briefly. He returned home; and he married Lucia the next summer, June 28, 1910.
Church: Though likely spending much time in First Baptist Church with the Pringle family, Will was the first Sumter area Shaw to leave the Presbyterian Church denomination as an adult, his 18 year old wife's family being Methodist. Will served many years on the Board of Stewards of Trinity Methodist Church in Sumter, as well as treasurer of its Sunday School Building Fund. Will & the families of his 2 sons were Methodists...the only Sumter Shaws who were not Presbyterians. On June 4th, 2023, his only grandson, Dr. Ervin B. Shaw & his wife, Betty Drafts Shaw, joined Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church in Lexington, S. C. & closed the loop back into Sumter Shaws all being Presbyterian.
WWI & WWII: He was not in the military of WWI because his wife was an invalid, and he had 2 young boys at home on the farm. However, he was a member of what was known as the "Home Guard". During WWII, Will was the head of the Rationing Board of Sumter County (the photo of an award for this local service is image #133687383 on Will's memorial). Another indication of his patriotic dedication to the people of our USA military in WWII was as a teacher for the Sunday Shaw AFB Adult Bible Class is noted in this newspaper clipping photo (image #133692221 on Will's memorial) & this appreciation folder (image #133688147 on Will's memorial).
Black neighbor, "Aunt" Sallie White, was vital motherly help to Will's two boys as well as Carol & Annie May by/during his second marriage. The memories I have are from back in the racial segregation days. The customs were so very odd. Strangers came to the front door & knocked (no blacks to the front door). Friends, kin, and your black "family" came to the back door. Tuomey Hospital had separate wings for blacks and whites as well as a small separate are for "Turks". There were separate public water fountains, but your black family cook did your cooking (but ate in another room). Though a farmer with store and seasonal cotton gin to run, he had one of the first automobile dealerships in Sumter...a great success (Eastern Carolina Motor Co. [see stock certificate photo on Will's memorial])! In those days, he'd have to take a gang of men to Detroit via unmarked roads (no real highway marker system until it began after 1926) & buy & drive the cars back to the dealership.
Will sold some land on the eastern side of Alligator Branch to "Uncle Johnny" Shaw who was Pres. & Mgr. of Shaw & McCollum Mercantile Co., dry goods and shoe sales, at 13 S. Main St. for $10,000 to help with medical expenses and to buy 312 North Salem Avenue as a town home. But Will lost the car business (and his wife died a couple months later) between 1921-1923 following the cotton depression of 1920. His brother, Jim, and Jim's wife Kathleen moved in to help care for the young boys. Later he hired a "Miss Maggy" Jackson from Rhems, S. C. until he married Bertha in Jan. 1922.
He subsequently sold cars at Sumter Buick. They moved back to Shaw's Crossroads farm in 1924 and had a dairy business. Bertha's sisters stayed with them during summers, and about 4 children from Epworth Orphanage stayed one summer. In 1926, they moved back to 312 N. Salem in town, and he and Hal Harby formed Sumter Motor Company about 1926 on the NW corner of Sumter and Hampton Streets [financed by Hal's dad [Henry], Will having the business "know how"). Sumter Motor Company folded in 1929-30 with onset of The Great Depression. Since all cars bought in Detroit were bought with cash (and not financed), there was no bankruptcy protection. Customers owed him but now had no money to pay. Will mortgaged the farm for $20,000. But, business debts and personal debt from his deceased wife's medical downhill course to death cost him the loss of the old Bartow Shaw home, farm, store, and cotton gin. Will swapped 312 North Salem and got some land from Uncle Willie Shaw and built a home around the Shaws Crossroad corner on Brewington Road next to cousin Ed & Mell Pringle. He got a job with Mr. John Steadman as a government appraiser. And he became a bookkeeper for Boyle Motor Company.
During the Great Depression, the welfare department would pay $25 per month to a family to take in a baby. Will & Bertha had as many as 6 (one, Robert, is buried in their cemetery plot) at a time. They adopted one such baby, Carol, in 1931.
Clubs: He was a member of the Ramsey Grove Hunt Club near Georgetown, S. C., as well as the Cain's Mill Club in Sumter County. Will joined the Sumter Rotary Club in Sumter in June 1945, and he (as a voting delegate) and Bertha took a train trip to the June 8-12, 1947, annual national convention in San Francisco. The train trip began in Goldsboro, N. C. & picked them up in Columbia, S. C. on the first of June. Will & Bertha kept a scrap book of the trip which had stops for scheduled sight-seeing in New Orleans, through Houston to San Antonio, El Paso, Grand Canyon, Los Angeles and arriving midday in San Francisco June 8. The return trip began June 12 through Reno to Salt Lake City. Then it went to Denver to Colorado Springs with a tour to include Pikes Peak. On June 16, they arrived in Kansas City for tours, leaving that evening for St. Louis & tours there. On the afternoon of the 18th, they were back in Columbia. When the Sumter Rotary Club moved its meeting place to the Elks Club (SE corner of Broad St. & Salem Ave.), Will dropped his membership (he was so opposed to alcohol). Will was a Mason and member of Claremont Lodge #64. Will & Bertha were both members of Beuclare Chapter #93 of the Order of the Eastern Star from April 1942-March 1946. He was also a member of Woodmen of the World.
Vacations: The earliest that I (oldest grandson) remember were to the Smokey Mountains (they often took me with them as a small boy). Others were the whole family going to a rental house at Cherry Grove Beach, S. C., near North Carolina (this would set a beach going habit that son Ervin & grandson Ervin, Jr. would do in their lifetimes). Then, in about 1955, he and his two sons built the two-story concrete-block house at Retreat Beach which later became North Litchfield Beach (as of 2015, that beach house still stands...with modifications..at #9 Media Lane). By that time each family used that house for separate vacations.
My "Gran'daddy" was known by that name to us grandchildren, to nieces & nephews as "Uncle Will", to wife & friends as "Will", "Daddy Will" to daughters-in-law, & "Daddy" to his children. They had the farm at Shaw's Crossroads and the house and lot at 312 North Salem Ave. in Sumter. They lost the farm due to debt over the expenses of his wife, Lucia, at Johns Hopkins during the last two years of her life (1919-21) followed by the cotton depression and then the Great depression.
Will's son, my Daddy (Ervin), always told me that, growing up, it seemed to him that they lived on the farm when times were hard and in town during good times. Ervin also admired the fact that "Gran'daddy's" strategy for farming was to plant early ("pushing" the season) so that he'd have the very early crop to sell, almost always at a higher price (the demand was highest then).
At the new Brewington Road home, he farmed and had about 30 dairy cows, plus pigs and chickens, and chopped and sold oak for kindling. In 1939, son Ervin (who'd been away as a salesman) moved back; and they had a 1000-chickens chicken-egg business which they managed together. When son Ervin left for WWII, there was not enough help anymore. The Crossroads place was sold, and Will & Bertha moved to 437 West Hampton Avenue in Sumter. Will became a book keeper for Boyle Motor Company and continued some farming. During WWII, Will was the head of the Rationing Board of Sumter County. When WWII ended, Will went to work with Booth-Boyle Livestock Company selling farm equipment. And Will created Booth Motor Company (one-third owners being Shaw, Booth, and Nelson). They lived for awhile on Charlotte Ave. Their last residence before nursing homes was #3 Warren Court.
Civic Duties: An act of the S. C. legislature created school boards, and Will was persuaded (along with Blanding Upshur) to serve as prominent county farmers on the first Board for Sumter in 1932 and served at least through 1941 (a Board group photo is on the first page of the Edmunds High School yearbook of 1941 and photo, HERE (on R. K. Wilder's memorial)). He served with the Schools Superintendent, William Henry Shaw, Sr. (no kinship at all) in 1939-44. And HERE he is in the 1944 school board picture (on Dr. C. J. Lemmon's memorial). I had his metal Notary Public seal stamper. When Mr. Edwin Boyle was national president of Fishers' of Men, Will served as Treasurer. He left that last Motor Company when Mr. John Duffy died; and then he was appointed Sumter Co. Auditor on 2 Nov. 1948 (appointed by state senator H. B. "Punch" Richardson) & held office until he had a bad stroke.
Stroke: On 9 September 1957 (age 66-67), he suffered a bad stroke which knocked out his whole right side and 90% of his ability to speak (a churchman and highly respected man in the community). He was about 90% invalid for 15 years, & someone in the family took him out for a ride nearly every day of those 15 years. He died at Hopewell Nursing Home on the Pinewood Road not far from Cain's Mill.
Race Relations, black family: My mother remembers "Gran'daddy" telling about how the white's and blacks coped together with the post-civil-war times as a segregated but admixed and closely interdependent small rural cross-roads community of good will at Shaw's Crossroad in Sumter County (Will's father, Bartow, had experienced all of that coping as well as heard things about those times from his own dad who fought in that War Between the States & died at age 44, when Bartow was also about 18 years old). "Aunt Sallie" White, above (paragraph #4), was a key person in the family. Later, when daughter Annie May was older, Annie May rememberred Marie as their cook. Gran'daddy & his two son's went together when I was little & had about a 50 acre place a few miles out the Camden highway and share-cropped with Sam Cantey and his family.
Daddy (Ervin) gave me most of the above information in 1974. Will always tried to treat all four children equally. Like almost all Shaws in the area, he was an upright, law-abiding man. The Shaws were known to be tight with their money, punctual, and exacting in their expectations and how they did things. While some (such as Will) were public spirited, most were private and with a "live and let live" approach to life...tending to their own business and seldom coming across as attempting to mind anyone else's business. Daddy (Ervin) told me that he was not aware of any dominant, guiding purpose or goal that Gran'daddy had for his life or his family. And, Ervin opined that his daddy would probably say that he was most proud of his work with the church.
Burial: On 30 June 1921, Will paid $200 for Sumter Cemetery Association perpetual care certificate #534 for one 16-grave cemetery lot which is known as "Will J. Shaw lot no. 428". It was certified for 16 burials & had a registered deed for $35. The perpetual care certificate was $200. I have no idea who burial #9, Robert, is. Don Pigate posted a Find a Grave memorial indicating the infant as Robert Hinson.
Sayings:
(1) "He is climbing fool's hill" was his comment when someone complained about young males and their behavior.
Link: I have a "Coming to America" story of Will's Shaw immigrant great-great grandfather's (John Shaw) landing in Charleston, S. C. in 1772 posted here, http://www.theeffectivetruth.info/bigstory.html.
Will was a quiet-about-it Christian follower of Jesus all of his life whose original birth name was William Judson Pringle Shaw. He was the great- great-grandson of John Shaw, his immigrant ancestor. He was baptized at age 12 as "Will J. P. Shaw" (see photo of the certificate) by Rev. C. C. Brown May 4, 1903 at First Baptist Church, Sumter, S. C. (his mother being a Pringle & Dr. Pringle, little Will's maternal grandfather still living & the Pringle's being staunch Baptists, he had his baptism at that Baptist church rather than his father's Presbyterian church.).
Will's mother died when he was about 10. In high school, he was dating Lucia Williamson who was from a staunch Methodist family & would marry into that staunch Methodist Church family. Will was due to deliver the declamation address for his graduating high school class of 1909 (https://www.edmundshigh.com/alumni.html?x=info&c=09). His father caught typhoid fever (no antibiotics yet invented) & died the day before graduation. Will was orphaned thereby & left with a younger brother and a large farm to run with farm store & cotton gin. His kin at Shaws Crossroad & the Williamson family surely provided a lot of help & advice. In 1910 Will married Lucia & started the first non-Presbyterian Shaw line in Sumter. The wedding newspaper write-up, first sentence: "One of the most beautiful church weddings ever seen by Sumter people took on Tuesday evening at First Methodist Church..." His younger brother would marry into a staunch Baptist family.
He was likely born across the highway at his Uncle Willie (W. B.) Shaw's home (as was Will's younger brother, Jim). Will was educated in the public schools of the city of Sumter (graduating boys high school class of 1909 [only 10 grades until 1914 when 11th was added]; see class (http://www.theeffectivetruth.info/SHS1909.html) and Sumter schools history (http://www.edmundshigh.com/schoolhistory.html). And see him in this other Sumter High School (boys) class of 1909 pic.
Football teams: The Sumter Military Academy team of 1901 is HERE; the 1902 team is HERE. He was a member of the Sumter High School football team of 1906 (http://www.edmundshigh.com/0609.html)...thought to be the first public high school team in the state in this new, exciting sport (In the 1957 HiWays yearbook of Edmunds High School [on page 110] is a Homecoming Reunion picture of members of the Sumter High Football team of 1906). And he was a football all state left halfback and captain of the Sumter High School football team of 1908 (see pic) which was unbeaten and not even scored upon and also defeated the USC "scrub" team. HERE is the 1910 football team on the E. D. Shaw memorial. A pic of his Sumter High School class of 1909 boys high school classmates (and links to other old SHS class graduates in the photo caption), HERE.
Orphaned: See above. His mother had died 8 years before. Will was chosen to give the important declamation speech at his high school graduation. However, his daddy totally unexpectedly died at age 48 the day before graduation of a brief episode of what was thought to be typhoid fever, leaving him & his young brother orphaned. There he was left suddenly with his father's farm, store, and cotton gin operation to run!
College: He was the 1st of his Shaw line to try to go to college (Davidson: a male college where he was admitted & then hid & camped in the woods at night to avoid the hazing & shortly left for home). He may have then attempted USC briefly. He returned home; and he married Lucia the next summer, June 28, 1910.
Church: Though likely spending much time in First Baptist Church with the Pringle family, Will was the first Sumter area Shaw to leave the Presbyterian Church denomination as an adult, his 18 year old wife's family being Methodist. Will served many years on the Board of Stewards of Trinity Methodist Church in Sumter, as well as treasurer of its Sunday School Building Fund. Will & the families of his 2 sons were Methodists...the only Sumter Shaws who were not Presbyterians. On June 4th, 2023, his only grandson, Dr. Ervin B. Shaw & his wife, Betty Drafts Shaw, joined Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church in Lexington, S. C. & closed the loop back into Sumter Shaws all being Presbyterian.
WWI & WWII: He was not in the military of WWI because his wife was an invalid, and he had 2 young boys at home on the farm. However, he was a member of what was known as the "Home Guard". During WWII, Will was the head of the Rationing Board of Sumter County (the photo of an award for this local service is image #133687383 on Will's memorial). Another indication of his patriotic dedication to the people of our USA military in WWII was as a teacher for the Sunday Shaw AFB Adult Bible Class is noted in this newspaper clipping photo (image #133692221 on Will's memorial) & this appreciation folder (image #133688147 on Will's memorial).
Black neighbor, "Aunt" Sallie White, was vital motherly help to Will's two boys as well as Carol & Annie May by/during his second marriage. The memories I have are from back in the racial segregation days. The customs were so very odd. Strangers came to the front door & knocked (no blacks to the front door). Friends, kin, and your black "family" came to the back door. Tuomey Hospital had separate wings for blacks and whites as well as a small separate are for "Turks". There were separate public water fountains, but your black family cook did your cooking (but ate in another room). Though a farmer with store and seasonal cotton gin to run, he had one of the first automobile dealerships in Sumter...a great success (Eastern Carolina Motor Co. [see stock certificate photo on Will's memorial])! In those days, he'd have to take a gang of men to Detroit via unmarked roads (no real highway marker system until it began after 1926) & buy & drive the cars back to the dealership.
Will sold some land on the eastern side of Alligator Branch to "Uncle Johnny" Shaw who was Pres. & Mgr. of Shaw & McCollum Mercantile Co., dry goods and shoe sales, at 13 S. Main St. for $10,000 to help with medical expenses and to buy 312 North Salem Avenue as a town home. But Will lost the car business (and his wife died a couple months later) between 1921-1923 following the cotton depression of 1920. His brother, Jim, and Jim's wife Kathleen moved in to help care for the young boys. Later he hired a "Miss Maggy" Jackson from Rhems, S. C. until he married Bertha in Jan. 1922.
He subsequently sold cars at Sumter Buick. They moved back to Shaw's Crossroads farm in 1924 and had a dairy business. Bertha's sisters stayed with them during summers, and about 4 children from Epworth Orphanage stayed one summer. In 1926, they moved back to 312 N. Salem in town, and he and Hal Harby formed Sumter Motor Company about 1926 on the NW corner of Sumter and Hampton Streets [financed by Hal's dad [Henry], Will having the business "know how"). Sumter Motor Company folded in 1929-30 with onset of The Great Depression. Since all cars bought in Detroit were bought with cash (and not financed), there was no bankruptcy protection. Customers owed him but now had no money to pay. Will mortgaged the farm for $20,000. But, business debts and personal debt from his deceased wife's medical downhill course to death cost him the loss of the old Bartow Shaw home, farm, store, and cotton gin. Will swapped 312 North Salem and got some land from Uncle Willie Shaw and built a home around the Shaws Crossroad corner on Brewington Road next to cousin Ed & Mell Pringle. He got a job with Mr. John Steadman as a government appraiser. And he became a bookkeeper for Boyle Motor Company.
During the Great Depression, the welfare department would pay $25 per month to a family to take in a baby. Will & Bertha had as many as 6 (one, Robert, is buried in their cemetery plot) at a time. They adopted one such baby, Carol, in 1931.
Clubs: He was a member of the Ramsey Grove Hunt Club near Georgetown, S. C., as well as the Cain's Mill Club in Sumter County. Will joined the Sumter Rotary Club in Sumter in June 1945, and he (as a voting delegate) and Bertha took a train trip to the June 8-12, 1947, annual national convention in San Francisco. The train trip began in Goldsboro, N. C. & picked them up in Columbia, S. C. on the first of June. Will & Bertha kept a scrap book of the trip which had stops for scheduled sight-seeing in New Orleans, through Houston to San Antonio, El Paso, Grand Canyon, Los Angeles and arriving midday in San Francisco June 8. The return trip began June 12 through Reno to Salt Lake City. Then it went to Denver to Colorado Springs with a tour to include Pikes Peak. On June 16, they arrived in Kansas City for tours, leaving that evening for St. Louis & tours there. On the afternoon of the 18th, they were back in Columbia. When the Sumter Rotary Club moved its meeting place to the Elks Club (SE corner of Broad St. & Salem Ave.), Will dropped his membership (he was so opposed to alcohol). Will was a Mason and member of Claremont Lodge #64. Will & Bertha were both members of Beuclare Chapter #93 of the Order of the Eastern Star from April 1942-March 1946. He was also a member of Woodmen of the World.
Vacations: The earliest that I (oldest grandson) remember were to the Smokey Mountains (they often took me with them as a small boy). Others were the whole family going to a rental house at Cherry Grove Beach, S. C., near North Carolina (this would set a beach going habit that son Ervin & grandson Ervin, Jr. would do in their lifetimes). Then, in about 1955, he and his two sons built the two-story concrete-block house at Retreat Beach which later became North Litchfield Beach (as of 2015, that beach house still stands...with modifications..at #9 Media Lane). By that time each family used that house for separate vacations.
My "Gran'daddy" was known by that name to us grandchildren, to nieces & nephews as "Uncle Will", to wife & friends as "Will", "Daddy Will" to daughters-in-law, & "Daddy" to his children. They had the farm at Shaw's Crossroads and the house and lot at 312 North Salem Ave. in Sumter. They lost the farm due to debt over the expenses of his wife, Lucia, at Johns Hopkins during the last two years of her life (1919-21) followed by the cotton depression and then the Great depression.
Will's son, my Daddy (Ervin), always told me that, growing up, it seemed to him that they lived on the farm when times were hard and in town during good times. Ervin also admired the fact that "Gran'daddy's" strategy for farming was to plant early ("pushing" the season) so that he'd have the very early crop to sell, almost always at a higher price (the demand was highest then).
At the new Brewington Road home, he farmed and had about 30 dairy cows, plus pigs and chickens, and chopped and sold oak for kindling. In 1939, son Ervin (who'd been away as a salesman) moved back; and they had a 1000-chickens chicken-egg business which they managed together. When son Ervin left for WWII, there was not enough help anymore. The Crossroads place was sold, and Will & Bertha moved to 437 West Hampton Avenue in Sumter. Will became a book keeper for Boyle Motor Company and continued some farming. During WWII, Will was the head of the Rationing Board of Sumter County. When WWII ended, Will went to work with Booth-Boyle Livestock Company selling farm equipment. And Will created Booth Motor Company (one-third owners being Shaw, Booth, and Nelson). They lived for awhile on Charlotte Ave. Their last residence before nursing homes was #3 Warren Court.
Civic Duties: An act of the S. C. legislature created school boards, and Will was persuaded (along with Blanding Upshur) to serve as prominent county farmers on the first Board for Sumter in 1932 and served at least through 1941 (a Board group photo is on the first page of the Edmunds High School yearbook of 1941 and photo, HERE (on R. K. Wilder's memorial)). He served with the Schools Superintendent, William Henry Shaw, Sr. (no kinship at all) in 1939-44. And HERE he is in the 1944 school board picture (on Dr. C. J. Lemmon's memorial). I had his metal Notary Public seal stamper. When Mr. Edwin Boyle was national president of Fishers' of Men, Will served as Treasurer. He left that last Motor Company when Mr. John Duffy died; and then he was appointed Sumter Co. Auditor on 2 Nov. 1948 (appointed by state senator H. B. "Punch" Richardson) & held office until he had a bad stroke.
Stroke: On 9 September 1957 (age 66-67), he suffered a bad stroke which knocked out his whole right side and 90% of his ability to speak (a churchman and highly respected man in the community). He was about 90% invalid for 15 years, & someone in the family took him out for a ride nearly every day of those 15 years. He died at Hopewell Nursing Home on the Pinewood Road not far from Cain's Mill.
Race Relations, black family: My mother remembers "Gran'daddy" telling about how the white's and blacks coped together with the post-civil-war times as a segregated but admixed and closely interdependent small rural cross-roads community of good will at Shaw's Crossroad in Sumter County (Will's father, Bartow, had experienced all of that coping as well as heard things about those times from his own dad who fought in that War Between the States & died at age 44, when Bartow was also about 18 years old). "Aunt Sallie" White, above (paragraph #4), was a key person in the family. Later, when daughter Annie May was older, Annie May rememberred Marie as their cook. Gran'daddy & his two son's went together when I was little & had about a 50 acre place a few miles out the Camden highway and share-cropped with Sam Cantey and his family.
Daddy (Ervin) gave me most of the above information in 1974. Will always tried to treat all four children equally. Like almost all Shaws in the area, he was an upright, law-abiding man. The Shaws were known to be tight with their money, punctual, and exacting in their expectations and how they did things. While some (such as Will) were public spirited, most were private and with a "live and let live" approach to life...tending to their own business and seldom coming across as attempting to mind anyone else's business. Daddy (Ervin) told me that he was not aware of any dominant, guiding purpose or goal that Gran'daddy had for his life or his family. And, Ervin opined that his daddy would probably say that he was most proud of his work with the church.
Burial: On 30 June 1921, Will paid $200 for Sumter Cemetery Association perpetual care certificate #534 for one 16-grave cemetery lot which is known as "Will J. Shaw lot no. 428". It was certified for 16 burials & had a registered deed for $35. The perpetual care certificate was $200. I have no idea who burial #9, Robert, is. Don Pigate posted a Find a Grave memorial indicating the infant as Robert Hinson.
Sayings:
(1) "He is climbing fool's hill" was his comment when someone complained about young males and their behavior.
Link: I have a "Coming to America" story of Will's Shaw immigrant great-great grandfather's (John Shaw) landing in Charleston, S. C. in 1772 posted here, http://www.theeffectivetruth.info/bigstory.html.
Will's mother died when he was about 10. In high school, he was dating Lucia Williamson who was from a staunch Methodist family & would marry into that staunch Methodist Church family. Will was due to deliver the declamation address for his graduating high school class of 1909 (https://www.edmundshigh.com/alumni.html?x=info&c=09). His father caught typhoid fever (no antibiotics yet invented) & died the day before graduation. Will was orphaned thereby & left with a younger brother and a large farm to run with farm store & cotton gin. His kin at Shaws Crossroad & the Williamson family surely provided a lot of help & advice. In 1910 Will married Lucia & started the first non-Presbyterian Shaw line in Sumter. The wedding newspaper write-up, first sentence: "One of the most beautiful church weddings ever seen by Sumter people took on Tuesday evening at First Methodist Church..." His younger brother would marry into a staunch Baptist family.
He was likely born across the highway at his Uncle Willie (W. B.) Shaw's home (as was Will's younger brother, Jim). Will was educated in the public schools of the city of Sumter (graduating boys high school class of 1909 [only 10 grades until 1914 when 11th was added]; see class (http://www.theeffectivetruth.info/SHS1909.html) and Sumter schools history (http://www.edmundshigh.com/schoolhistory.html). And see him in this other Sumter High School (boys) class of 1909 pic.
Football teams: The Sumter Military Academy team of 1901 is HERE; the 1902 team is HERE. He was a member of the Sumter High School football team of 1906 (http://www.edmundshigh.com/0609.html)...thought to be the first public high school team in the state in this new, exciting sport (In the 1957 HiWays yearbook of Edmunds High School [on page 110] is a Homecoming Reunion picture of members of the Sumter High Football team of 1906). And he was a football all state left halfback and captain of the Sumter High School football team of 1908 (see pic) which was unbeaten and not even scored upon and also defeated the USC "scrub" team. HERE is the 1910 football team on the E. D. Shaw memorial. A pic of his Sumter High School class of 1909 boys high school classmates (and links to other old SHS class graduates in the photo caption), HERE.
Orphaned: See above. His mother had died 8 years before. Will was chosen to give the important declamation speech at his high school graduation. However, his daddy totally unexpectedly died at age 48 the day before graduation of a brief episode of what was thought to be typhoid fever, leaving him & his young brother orphaned. There he was left suddenly with his father's farm, store, and cotton gin operation to run!
College: He was the 1st of his Shaw line to try to go to college (Davidson: a male college where he was admitted & then hid & camped in the woods at night to avoid the hazing & shortly left for home). He may have then attempted USC briefly. He returned home; and he married Lucia the next summer, June 28, 1910.
Church: Though likely spending much time in First Baptist Church with the Pringle family, Will was the first Sumter area Shaw to leave the Presbyterian Church denomination as an adult, his 18 year old wife's family being Methodist. Will served many years on the Board of Stewards of Trinity Methodist Church in Sumter, as well as treasurer of its Sunday School Building Fund. Will & the families of his 2 sons were Methodists...the only Sumter Shaws who were not Presbyterians. On June 4th, 2023, his only grandson, Dr. Ervin B. Shaw & his wife, Betty Drafts Shaw, joined Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church in Lexington, S. C. & closed the loop back into Sumter Shaws all being Presbyterian.
WWI & WWII: He was not in the military of WWI because his wife was an invalid, and he had 2 young boys at home on the farm. However, he was a member of what was known as the "Home Guard". During WWII, Will was the head of the Rationing Board of Sumter County (the photo of an award for this local service is image #133687383 on Will's memorial). Another indication of his patriotic dedication to the people of our USA military in WWII was as a teacher for the Sunday Shaw AFB Adult Bible Class is noted in this newspaper clipping photo (image #133692221 on Will's memorial) & this appreciation folder (image #133688147 on Will's memorial).
Black neighbor, "Aunt" Sallie White, was vital motherly help to Will's two boys as well as Carol & Annie May by/during his second marriage. The memories I have are from back in the racial segregation days. The customs were so very odd. Strangers came to the front door & knocked (no blacks to the front door). Friends, kin, and your black "family" came to the back door. Tuomey Hospital had separate wings for blacks and whites as well as a small separate are for "Turks". There were separate public water fountains, but your black family cook did your cooking (but ate in another room). Though a farmer with store and seasonal cotton gin to run, he had one of the first automobile dealerships in Sumter...a great success (Eastern Carolina Motor Co. [see stock certificate photo on Will's memorial])! In those days, he'd have to take a gang of men to Detroit via unmarked roads (no real highway marker system until it began after 1926) & buy & drive the cars back to the dealership.
Will sold some land on the eastern side of Alligator Branch to "Uncle Johnny" Shaw who was Pres. & Mgr. of Shaw & McCollum Mercantile Co., dry goods and shoe sales, at 13 S. Main St. for $10,000 to help with medical expenses and to buy 312 North Salem Avenue as a town home. But Will lost the car business (and his wife died a couple months later) between 1921-1923 following the cotton depression of 1920. His brother, Jim, and Jim's wife Kathleen moved in to help care for the young boys. Later he hired a "Miss Maggy" Jackson from Rhems, S. C. until he married Bertha in Jan. 1922.
He subsequently sold cars at Sumter Buick. They moved back to Shaw's Crossroads farm in 1924 and had a dairy business. Bertha's sisters stayed with them during summers, and about 4 children from Epworth Orphanage stayed one summer. In 1926, they moved back to 312 N. Salem in town, and he and Hal Harby formed Sumter Motor Company about 1926 on the NW corner of Sumter and Hampton Streets [financed by Hal's dad [Henry], Will having the business "know how"). Sumter Motor Company folded in 1929-30 with onset of The Great Depression. Since all cars bought in Detroit were bought with cash (and not financed), there was no bankruptcy protection. Customers owed him but now had no money to pay. Will mortgaged the farm for $20,000. But, business debts and personal debt from his deceased wife's medical downhill course to death cost him the loss of the old Bartow Shaw home, farm, store, and cotton gin. Will swapped 312 North Salem and got some land from Uncle Willie Shaw and built a home around the Shaws Crossroad corner on Brewington Road next to cousin Ed & Mell Pringle. He got a job with Mr. John Steadman as a government appraiser. And he became a bookkeeper for Boyle Motor Company.
During the Great Depression, the welfare department would pay $25 per month to a family to take in a baby. Will & Bertha had as many as 6 (one, Robert, is buried in their cemetery plot) at a time. They adopted one such baby, Carol, in 1931.
Clubs: He was a member of the Ramsey Grove Hunt Club near Georgetown, S. C., as well as the Cain's Mill Club in Sumter County. Will joined the Sumter Rotary Club in Sumter in June 1945, and he (as a voting delegate) and Bertha took a train trip to the June 8-12, 1947, annual national convention in San Francisco. The train trip began in Goldsboro, N. C. & picked them up in Columbia, S. C. on the first of June. Will & Bertha kept a scrap book of the trip which had stops for scheduled sight-seeing in New Orleans, through Houston to San Antonio, El Paso, Grand Canyon, Los Angeles and arriving midday in San Francisco June 8. The return trip began June 12 through Reno to Salt Lake City. Then it went to Denver to Colorado Springs with a tour to include Pikes Peak. On June 16, they arrived in Kansas City for tours, leaving that evening for St. Louis & tours there. On the afternoon of the 18th, they were back in Columbia. When the Sumter Rotary Club moved its meeting place to the Elks Club (SE corner of Broad St. & Salem Ave.), Will dropped his membership (he was so opposed to alcohol). Will was a Mason and member of Claremont Lodge #64. Will & Bertha were both members of Beuclare Chapter #93 of the Order of the Eastern Star from April 1942-March 1946. He was also a member of Woodmen of the World.
Vacations: The earliest that I (oldest grandson) remember were to the Smokey Mountains (they often took me with them as a small boy). Others were the whole family going to a rental house at Cherry Grove Beach, S. C., near North Carolina (this would set a beach going habit that son Ervin & grandson Ervin, Jr. would do in their lifetimes). Then, in about 1955, he and his two sons built the two-story concrete-block house at Retreat Beach which later became North Litchfield Beach (as of 2015, that beach house still stands...with modifications..at #9 Media Lane). By that time each family used that house for separate vacations.
My "Gran'daddy" was known by that name to us grandchildren, to nieces & nephews as "Uncle Will", to wife & friends as "Will", "Daddy Will" to daughters-in-law, & "Daddy" to his children. They had the farm at Shaw's Crossroads and the house and lot at 312 North Salem Ave. in Sumter. They lost the farm due to debt over the expenses of his wife, Lucia, at Johns Hopkins during the last two years of her life (1919-21) followed by the cotton depression and then the Great depression.
Will's son, my Daddy (Ervin), always told me that, growing up, it seemed to him that they lived on the farm when times were hard and in town during good times. Ervin also admired the fact that "Gran'daddy's" strategy for farming was to plant early ("pushing" the season) so that he'd have the very early crop to sell, almost always at a higher price (the demand was highest then).
At the new Brewington Road home, he farmed and had about 30 dairy cows, plus pigs and chickens, and chopped and sold oak for kindling. In 1939, son Ervin (who'd been away as a salesman) moved back; and they had a 1000-chickens chicken-egg business which they managed together. When son Ervin left for WWII, there was not enough help anymore. The Crossroads place was sold, and Will & Bertha moved to 437 West Hampton Avenue in Sumter. Will became a book keeper for Boyle Motor Company and continued some farming. During WWII, Will was the head of the Rationing Board of Sumter County. When WWII ended, Will went to work with Booth-Boyle Livestock Company selling farm equipment. And Will created Booth Motor Company (one-third owners being Shaw, Booth, and Nelson). They lived for awhile on Charlotte Ave. Their last residence before nursing homes was #3 Warren Court.
Civic Duties: An act of the S. C. legislature created school boards, and Will was persuaded (along with Blanding Upshur) to serve as prominent county farmers on the first Board for Sumter in 1932 and served at least through 1941 (a Board group photo is on the first page of the Edmunds High School yearbook of 1941 and photo, HERE (on R. K. Wilder's memorial)). He served with the Schools Superintendent, William Henry Shaw, Sr. (no kinship at all) in 1939-44. And HERE he is in the 1944 school board picture (on Dr. C. J. Lemmon's memorial). I had his metal Notary Public seal stamper. When Mr. Edwin Boyle was national president of Fishers' of Men, Will served as Treasurer. He left that last Motor Company when Mr. John Duffy died; and then he was appointed Sumter Co. Auditor on 2 Nov. 1948 (appointed by state senator H. B. "Punch" Richardson) & held office until he had a bad stroke.
Stroke: On 9 September 1957 (age 66-67), he suffered a bad stroke which knocked out his whole right side and 90% of his ability to speak (a churchman and highly respected man in the community). He was about 90% invalid for 15 years, & someone in the family took him out for a ride nearly every day of those 15 years. He died at Hopewell Nursing Home on the Pinewood Road not far from Cain's Mill.
Race Relations, black family: My mother remembers "Gran'daddy" telling about how the white's and blacks coped together with the post-civil-war times as a segregated but admixed and closely interdependent small rural cross-roads community of good will at Shaw's Crossroad in Sumter County (Will's father, Bartow, had experienced all of that coping as well as heard things about those times from his own dad who fought in that War Between the States & died at age 44, when Bartow was also about 18 years old). "Aunt Sallie" White, above (paragraph #4), was a key person in the family. Later, when daughter Annie May was older, Annie May rememberred Marie as their cook. Gran'daddy & his two son's went together when I was little & had about a 50 acre place a few miles out the Camden highway and share-cropped with Sam Cantey and his family.
Daddy (Ervin) gave me most of the above information in 1974. Will always tried to treat all four children equally. Like almost all Shaws in the area, he was an upright, law-abiding man. The Shaws were known to be tight with their money, punctual, and exacting in their expectations and how they did things. While some (such as Will) were public spirited, most were private and with a "live and let live" approach to life...tending to their own business and seldom coming across as attempting to mind anyone else's business. Daddy (Ervin) told me that he was not aware of any dominant, guiding purpose or goal that Gran'daddy had for his life or his family. And, Ervin opined that his daddy would probably say that he was most proud of his work with the church.
Burial: On 30 June 1921, Will paid $200 for Sumter Cemetery Association perpetual care certificate #534 for one 16-grave cemetery lot which is known as "Will J. Shaw lot no. 428". It was certified for 16 burials & had a registered deed for $35. The perpetual care certificate was $200. I have no idea who burial #9, Robert, is. Don Pigate posted a Find a Grave memorial indicating the infant as Robert Hinson.
Sayings:
(1) "He is climbing fool's hill" was his comment when someone complained about young males and their behavior.
Link: I have a "Coming to America" story of Will's Shaw immigrant great-great grandfather's (John Shaw) landing in Charleston, S. C. in 1772 posted here, http://www.theeffectivetruth.info/bigstory.html.
