Robert Sidey and May Travis Shaw

Robert Sidey Shaw was born at Woodburn, Ontario, on July 24, 1871. He earned his B.S.A. degree from the Ontario Agricultural College in 1893, and after five years managing his father’s farm he joined the faculty of the Montana State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts as Professor of Agriculture and Assistant Agriculturist in the Experiment Station.¹

At Bozeman, Shaw met Miss May Travis. She was born at Newton, New Jersey, on May 8, 1865, and was a member of the first class to graduate from the University of North Dakota in 1889. She taught in the public schools of Oregon for a few years before joining the Montana State College faculty as Instructor in Mathematics. She became head of the department in 1899. When Robert and May were married on January 2, 1901, she resigned her position, much to the dismay of her students—a poem in the school newspaper, titled “To Robert S. Shaw, by An Irate Student,” ended its ten couplets of iambic pentameter with, “O, Shaw! You’ve spoiled our bright and glad New Year.”²

Robert Shaw joined the Michigan Agricultural College faculty in 1902 as Assistant Professor of Agriculture. By 1908 he had advanced to the dual appointment of Dean of Agriculture and Director of the Experiment Station. He served as acting President three times before officially taking that post in 1928.

During his tenure, President Shaw “instituted a major reorganization of the curriculum, established a graduate school,” and showed excellent foresight for the school’s later expansion by purchasing some 1,000 acres of land surrounding the college. Meanwhile, May Shaw was an active leader in campus activities and faculty advisor to women’s organizations. “She organized the first national sorority on the campus, Alpha Gamma Delta [in 1922], and helped to organize two honor societies for women, Tower Guard and Mortar Board, which was known as Sphinx at the time it was established.” (The AGD chapter closed in 2001, but both honor society chapters remain active, and now admit men as well.)³

By 1914 the Shaws owned 160 acres of farmland north of the East Lansing city limits. The property, a square measuring a half-mile on each side, was centered at what is now the intersection of Harrison Road and Saginaw Street. At the time, as their daughter Sarah would later reminisce, “East Lansing was 100 percent a college community until the expansion started around 1930.” Between 1926 and 1950, Shaw platted the land south of Saginaw Street, on both sides of Harrison Road, into the five subdivisions of Glencairn.⁴

In 1941, Robert Shaw retired to become President Emeritus, handing over the reins to his son-in-law, John A. Hannah (M.A.C. ’23), who had married Sarah May Shaw (M.S.C. ’32) in 1938. The Shaws had lived on Faculty Row for all thirty-nine years that Robert was on the faculty, most of them in № 5, the former home of Professor Kedzie. Their home while he was president, № 2, then became a women’s cooperative house named for Mrs. Shaw.⁵

Robert S. Shaw House, 824 Longfellow Dr. (1940)

Robert and May Shaw’s retirement home is a lovely Georgian Revival work that stands proudly on a knoll overlooking the forty-four acres that constituted the northwest quarter of their estate. It stood alone in that broad expanse and was originally addressed as 1201 North Harrison Road. They resided there for the rest of their lives. May Travis Shaw died on September 24, 1947. Robert Shaw died on February 7, 1953.

The remaining portions of the Shaw estate north of Saginaw Street were developed in the 1960s. The portion east of Harrison Road became Hiddentree Apartments in 1964 (except for the southeast corner of roughly 1.2 acres which became Oakwood Apartments in 1976). The Lansing Development Corporation platted most of the portion west of Harrison into Shaw Estates № 1 and № 2 in 1965–66, re-addressing the Shaw house as 824 Longfellow Drive. The Eyde Company completed the package with Shaw Estates № 3 in 1976. The streets of Shaw Estates are all named for famous nineteenth century poets and scholars: Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, and William H. Prescott.

1. MSU Archives biography. College Exponent, 3(1), Oct. 1898, p. 16. ↩︎
2. College Exponent, 5(4), Jan. 1901, p. 3. ↩︎
3. MSU Archives biography. The Record, 52(5), Oct. 1942, p. 4. ↩︎
4. Chadwick, p 1. LSJ, 17 Nov 1914, p. 9. Thomas, p. 195. ↩︎
5. MSU Archives biography. ↩︎