Shaw (Lemuel) is born in Barnstable.

The son of Oakes and Susana (Hayward) Shaw, Lemuel Shaw graduates from Harvard College and moves to Boston in 1805 to practice law. He serves in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1811-1814) and Senate (1821-1822) and writes Boston’s first city charter in 1822.* Shaw marries Elizabeth Knapp in 1818 and Hope Savage in 1827, and subsequently becomes the father-in-law of Herman Melville. Shaw then serves as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (1830-60), where he writes over 2,000 opinions and presides over a number of important cases. Called the “Father of American Jurisprudence,” he dies in Boston on March 30, 1861.