Sarah Blake Sturgis Shaw

Sarah Blake Sturgis Shaw (August 31, 1815 – December 31, 1902) was an American abolitionist, women's rights supporter, anti-imperialist and philanthropist. She was the daughter of Bostonians Nathaniel Russell Sturgis (1779-1856) and Susannah Thomsen Parkman and a younger sister of the merchant Russell Sturgis (1805–1887).She married Francis George Shaw on 9 June 1835. Shortly after their marriage, the Shaws became members of the Boston Society of the New Jerusalem—a "part of the 'evangelical' wing of the Unitarian Church." In 1838 they joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and would later become founding members of the Unitarian Church in Staten Island.

Sarah was the mother of Robert Gould Shaw and Josephine Shaw Lowell.

Of Mrs. Shaw's personality and intellect, author William Rhinelander Stewart writes, "Whatever things were best in art, literature, or music instantly appealed to her, and were loved from the time she first saw or heard them; and with the aid of a retentive memory, she was able even towards the close of a life prolonged to her eighty-seventh year to recite whole pages of Shakespeare and Milton, her favorite poets." And from the pen of Century Magazine editor Richard Watson Gilder, a poem—

Mother of heroes, she—of them who gave
Their lives to lift the lowly, free the slave.
Her, through long years, two master passions bound:
Love of our free land; and of all sweet sound.
'T was praising her to praise this land of grace;
And when I think on music—lo, her face!

Sarah Blake Shaw died at the age of eighty-seven on 31 December 1902.