The sixty-eight-year-old Shaw, a graduate of Harvard College, former president of the Boston Bar Association, and the father-in-law of writer Herman Melville, reveled in his reputation. The definition of a Boston power broker, he was, in fact, synonymous with the city itself—when Boston Town became a city in 1822, with its population of just a little over forty-three thousand people, it was Shaw who authored the city charter.
