Joseph C. Shaw was born to Benjamin J. & Sarah (DeLong) Shaw on February 7, 1840, in Paris Township, Portage County, Ohio, roughly midway between Akron and Youngstown. The Shaws were farmers who ran a grain mill, and he was the second of their five children. Joseph lived at home until late 1860 or early 1861, when he struck out on his own to farm west of Eaton Rapids, Michigan. However, not long after he arrived the Civil War broke out, and on August 5, 1861, he volunteered to serve as a private in the 6th Michigan Infantry, Company H. He was 23 years old at the time.
Shaw may have initially trained at Fort Wayne near Detroit, as many Michigan recruits did, but by the end of the month the regiment assembled at Kalamazoo, where he was officially mustered in on August 20. Ten days later, the 6th Michigan shipped out to Baltimore, where it guarded the city throughout the fall of 1861. They were stationed at Camp McKim.
The 6th Michigan Infantry soon gained a reputation for poor discipline. Its soldiers routinely raided local farms for fruit and fowl. Many also held abolitionist views and harbored (against army regulations) those who had escaped enslavement; rather than surrender them when ordered, they helped them flee.
In February 1862, Shaw’s regiment sailed to Fort Monroe, Virginia, and then on to Fort Massachusetts on Ship Island, off the Mississippi coast. From here, in the spring, they participated in the Union capture of nearby New Orleans, a victory that changed the early course of the war. By holding a critical city in the deep South, the North was able to conduct blockade operations along the coast and, later, the Siege of Vicksburg.
When the 6th Michigan Infantry landed in the Crescent City on May 2, it was one of the first Union regiments to do so; they made their quarters at the fortified US Mint. Soon, however, they were part of an early failed assault on Vicksburg. The soldiers grew sick while stationed on the river, and had to withdraw to Baton Rouge, where they quartered at the Pentagon Barracks.
Union commanders struggled to keep the regiment in line, though their leader, Col. Frederick W. Curtenius, usually sided with the soldiers. Citing the 1862 Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves, Curtenius’s men refused to expel formerly enslaved refugees from their camp. As punishment, Curtenius was briefly arrested and the regiment was forced out of the barracks and into the surrounding woods without their tents in the heat of summer. Many became sick and died.
On August 5, 1862, the 6th Michigan fought at the Battle of Baton Rouge when Rebel forces under the command of Gen. John C. Breckinridge attacked the city with two Confederate divisions. Many ill and injured Michigan soldiers snuck out of the field hospital and joined the ranks. Shaw’s regiment defended the Union line from ditches along Florida Street, just southwest of the Magnolia Cemetery, where most of the fighting took place. For one hour, they shot at Rebel soldiers just 20 feet away, separated only by a picket fence. Corporal Richard Austin recalled, “The balls all fell around my head like hailstones in wintertime, and the boys lay there and told stories to one another . . . and had good times all the while the Rebels were firing at us.”
The battle finally broke when Confederate Colonel Henry Allen’s steed was hit by a cannon shell—the horse and commander fell and the Rebels fled. Union soldiers gave chase, capturing 20 men, 50 muskets, and the colors of the 9th Louisiana Battalion. (Allen survived.)
Two weeks later, the army was forced to abandon the Louisiana capital, though the Union general ordered that a statue of George Washington be removed from the state capitol building and brought with them. They pulled back to New Orleans, taking 500 formerly enslaved individuals with them. Many would later volunteer to serve in the Union Army, perhaps with Shaw, as you'll soon read.
With its ranks depleted, the 6th Michigan was ordered to guard Metarie Ridge outside New Orleans, which proved to be an assignment deadlier than the battle they just fought; by fall 1862’s end, they were down to 191 active, healthy soldiers from the 996 who had originally marched out of Kalamazoo. Nevertheless, through the winter of 1862–63, the regiment conducted raids on Confederate-held railroad lines and ironclad gunboats throughout the region, and burned a few plantation mansions to the ground. Historians estimate they did $400,000 worth of damage to the Amite River & Jackson Railroad between May 9 and 18.
In May 1863, the 6th Michigan joined the Siege of Port Hudson, which didn’t fall until July 9. What was left of the regiment, only 160 men, was reorganized as the 6th Michigan Heavy Artillery, stationed at the just-liberated Port Hudson.
Joseph C. Shaw did not stay long in the new regiment. On September 10, 1863, he accepted a commission as a 1st lieutenant “to fill an original vacancy” in the 15th Louisiana Corps D’Afrique Infantry, Company K, a regiment of free Black men organized in New Orleans. The regiment performed guard duty and worked on construction projects in southern Louisiana, and in February 1864 was renamed the 5th Louisiana Corps D’Afrique Engineers. One month later, they became the 99th US Colored Infantry, and Shaw was assigned to Company D.
In April Shaw took sick, and entered an unknown regimental hospital in New Orleans, where he remained until mid-summer. On August 15 he was named Acting Regimental Quartermaster for the 99th US Colored Infantry. (A quartermaster is “a military officer responsible for providing quarters, rations, clothing, and other supplies.”) He remained in this assignment until the end of the year, with the exception of October, when he was placed in temporary command of Company D following the loss of an officer.
In January 1865 Shaw shipped out with the regiment to Fort Jefferson, the Union’s coastal fortress off the Florida Keys. The fort acted primarily as a prison for Union deserters, and would later hold three men convicted in the plot to kidnap and kill Abraham Lincoln—Edman Spangler, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O’Laughlen—as well as Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set John Wilkes Booth’s fractured leg after he broke it jumping from the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre.
Joseph C. Shaw remained at Fort Jefferson until the end of the war. On April 21, one week after Lincoln was murdered, Shaw was named Acting Assistant Quartermaster at Key West, then later at Tallahassee. In December he was assigned to Tampa, and in February 1866 was put in command of a detachment from the 99th Colored Infantry in Charlotte Harbor, near Punta Gorda. In March they moved to St. Marks, Florida, south of Tallahassee, where Shaw reported on his final assignment:
Head Quts Post of St Marks
Saint Marks Florida
Apl. 16th 1866
To the
A.A.A.Genl
H’d Qurs Dept of Fla
Tallahassee, Fla
Sir,
In obedience to instructions this day received dated Tallahassee, Fla. Apr. 13, 66. I have the honor to report as follows:
The orders directing the establishment for the protection of this post have been complied with as far as possible. The Quarantine Anchorage is established and marked by a yellow flag. The field piece is in position at the “Sand Battery” (near the light house) and manned as per instructions. The required walk and yellow flag at the boarding station will be in readiness at the earliest practical moment, the material being in most part already obtained.
Very respectfully
Your most obt servant
J.C. Shaw
1st Lt. 99th U.S.C.F. Comdg Port St. Marks
On April 23, 1866, Joseph C. Shaw mustered out of the army with his company at Tallahassee and returned to Michigan. He had been gone almost five years.
Sometime during the next two years, Shaw married a woman named Nancy Caroline Montgomery, our 2nd cousin 4x removed (on the Stewart branch). Montgomery was a younger sister of Peter Dudley Montgomery, who had served as a 1st lieutenant the 6th Michigan Infantry’s Company H . . . the same company as Shaw. They could have all known each other before the war, as they all hailed from Eaton Rapids.
Joseph & Nancy Shaw had one child, Edny Knight Shaw, on September 21, 1869. The 1880 Census shows Joseph Shaw working as a freight agent, likely using the skill he developed as an army quartermaster.
Around 1895 the Shaws moved to Grand Rapids, where he is listed as a farmer living on S. Euclid Avenue. Joseph C. Shaw appears to have given up on farming in 1908, when his family moved to 338 Euclid Avenue, about eight blocks from the current home of Joey, Claudia, and Jackson! An advertisement for J. C. Shaw & Co. in the Grand Rapids Press on January 12, 1899, touts “a new line of Teas and Coffees” and “fine cut and plug tobacco in immense quantities.”
According to local newspapers, Joseph C. Shaw played a part in resolving a scandal that captivated the citizens of Grand Rapids around 1909. Stockholders in the Santa Clara Fruit and Cotton Company, one of whom was Shaw, were dissatisfied with the earnings they were receiving—indeed, they found out later that the only dividend they ever received was paid for with the quick sale of several mules amounting to $1,000. (Santa Clara Fruit and Cotton was a 1,400-tree citrus grove in Magnolia, Cuba.) A stockholder meeting in June 1909 ended with the ouster of most of the board of directors, and the installation of Shaw as its new president. He was still serving in that capacity as of the 1911 city directory.
Joseph C. Shaw died of cancer in his house on Euclid Avenue on November 26, 1915, 109 years ago today, and was buried in Oakhill Cemetery in Grand Rapids. He was 75. Nancy Caroline (Montgomery) Shaw died on January 6, 1918, and is buried with Joseph. She was 73.
The Shaw’s only child, Edwy Knight Shaw, married a woman named Augusta Barnhard in 1899. For years he managed dry good stores in western Michigan, and died in 1938. He is also buried in Oakhill Cemetery.
A few final notes on Joseph C. Shaw. His uncle, Henry A. Shaw, a Democrat from Eaton County, served in the Michigan State Legislature from 1856 to 1860, and was the Michigan Speaker of the House in his last term. Then in 1861, at the age of 43, he enlisted as a private in the 2nd Michigan Cavalry, soon rising to the rank of major. Henry’s son Birney enlisted with him and served in the same company, starting as a private and mustering out as a 2nd lieutenant. Their regiment served in the Western Theater from Island No. 10 to Selma.
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