Shaw (Robert Gould Jr.) is born in Boston.

The son of Robert and Sarah (Sturgis), Robert Gould Shaw Jr. grows up at 34 1/2 Beacon Street, graduates from Harvard College, works briefly in New York City, and enlists in the Union Army as a private in the New York National Guards in 1860. After accepting command of the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment in early 1863, he marries Anne Haggerty on May 2, 1863, but is killed 10 weeks later, leading the regiment in an assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina on July 18, 1863. Shaw is buried there in an unmarked graves with other members of the regiment killed in the battle.