Alston Knox Shaw was
born February 11, 1833, at Townson, Norfork County, in Canada West. Though
a Canadian by birth, he is really a Holland Yankee. His grandfather on his
father's side came over in the Mayflower while his mother's people
belonged to the oldest colony in the New England states. From both sides
of the family he is a direct descendant of soldiers of Revolutionary fame.
His grandmother, Mrs. John Martin, was a cousin of Ethan Allen.
After the states began to get settled the family drifted into Canada, then
a new frontier. Being of a frontier loving class of people, Alston Shaw
naturally drifted into the West, where there was a larger scope for a
roving and scouting disposition to wander in.
The first fifteen
years of Al Shaw's life was spent on his father's ranch in Canada with his
nine sisters and six brothers. He then worked as an apprentice for three
years in Austin's blacksmith shop in Simcoe.
At the end of the
three years, he and another apprentice, John Lemons, formed a partnership
and started a shop of their own in the country. They were together about
two years, when the restless disposition urged Shaw to move on, so he sold
his interest to his partner and got the other boys to take him to
Branford, the nearest railway station, a distance of twenty miles. He took
the train for Chicago, Illinois, then drifted down to Rock Island, up the
Mississippi river to Fulton City, finally stopping at Union Grove,
Illinois, a year. After an absence of two years, he returned to his home
in Canada and remained there during the winter and worked his father's and
brother's teams in a lumber camp.
The following spring he started
westward again and has never gone back to his old home. When he got word
that his mother was dangerously ill he started home, but had only gone a
day or two's travel across the plains, when word was brought to him that
she was dead, so he turned around and went back to the frontier.
He lived at Union Grove two years; then in 1859, he started for Pike's
Peak, but only got to Fort Kearney, Neb., when things began to go wrong.
He gave away his interest in the outfit and started back to the Missouri
river on foot. He worked his way back to Union Grove, 111. In the spring
of '60 he again pulled out for Pike's Peak and in the fall of the same
year he arrived in Denver. Shortly afterwards he went to Central City and
worked in the mines all winter.
In 1862 he opened a livery barn in
Denver. This same year he moved a family and some goods up to Montana,
returning to Denver in the spring of '64, when the Indian raids and
massacres were starting.
Shaw loaded his wagon and made a start
for Montana just about the time martial law was declared. He had only gone
a few miles when he was stopped and his teams put into service. He loaned
the wagon to a woman and she went to Montana with it. With his teams and
wagon gone he was practically "broke," so when the call for volunteers was
given in the summer of '64, he enlisted. He served until the regiment was
discharged. In the spring of '65 he went to freighting for Colonel
Chivington and made thirteen trips across the plains from Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, to Denver.
In 1873 he married and moved to
Saguache, Colorado, where he went into the livery business. He had two
children, a boy and girl ; both died in their childhood. Later he carried
the mail to Los Pinos Agency, a distance of forty miles; after this hauled
produce into Leadville.
In 1883 ne moved over to Ruby, Gunnison
County, where he freighted for several years. Coming down on the western
slope, he bought a ranch, lived on it four years, then sold out to a sheep
man and moved to where Juanita now is and bought another ranch. In 1908 he
sold it, and since then he has been knocking around Paonia and Hotchkiss,
Colorado, where everyone knows him as Uncle Shaw. He spends his time in
caring for and training his five thoroughbred horses.
Alston Knox Shaw
Some of the Pioneers of Colorado
Source: True History of some of the Pioneers of Colorado, by Miss
Luella Shaw, Press of Carson Harper Co, Denver, Colorado, 1909 |
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