Leander M. Shaw

Leander M. Shaw and John P. Rapalje were the principal founders of Rap-Shaw Club. Details of the story of how the club came into existence can be found in my book, The History of the Rap-Shaw Club (2019) and more briefly on this blog in a post on 5/16/21. In order to form a better idea of the personalities of the men who founded the club, I’ve written brief biographical sketches of them. I previously posted my biography of John P. Rapalje on October 14, 2021. 

Leander Meade Shaw was born on June 1, 1837. His father, Edward Shaw, established the Shaw Funeral Home in Fairport, NY, a short distance east of Rochester along the Erie Canal. His mother, Melissa Shaw, was directly descended from the original founders of Fairport. Leander married Josephine B. Pearse of Columbus, PA on Oct. 14, 1867. At the time of their marriage Ms. Pearse was the principal of the Fairport High School, the first woman to ever hold that post. They had no children.

 

Leander took over the funeral business on his father’s retirement in 1870. The Shaw Funeral Home was located in downtown Fairport on West Avenue in a building known as the Shaw Block. He was also the proprietor of the Shaw Opera House located at the same address. The Opera House was the scene of home talent plays, minstrel shows, and other such entertainment. The North-Central Volunteer Firemen’s Association held its 1899 annual convention at Shaw’s Hall. Outside more than 800 people gathered to watch a balloon ascension and a race between an automobile and a horse.

 

Shaw was a fixture in the Fairport political scene. In 1896 he was elected Monroe County coroner. He was also a long-time officer of the local masonic lodge, Fairport Lodge No. 476.

 

An entry in the Business Directory for the Village of Fairport [1898] pp 158 – 159, paints such a vivid picture of Shaw’s life that it is worth reading in full.

 

Whether adopted, or to the manor born, Fairport has no more loyal son than L. M. Shaw, whose whole life has been spent in this village, and he has often been heard to say, “if I were worth a million, I could find no place on earth where I would rather spend my days than in Fairport,” and this feeling was even stronger after any visit or a trip to the far West, to the South or in any neighboring state. However beautiful or inviting the land, it had no power, it was powerless to quench the patriotic love for the old town or the old friends. The name which his great grandfather bestowed upon this town has always been to him a fair port in which to anchor.

 

Born here in 1837, he has seen the town grow from the merest hamlet to its present beautiful proportions. As a lad he drove his cow through the woodland paths where now stretches West avenue and gathered fire wood in the lot where his present home stands. He hunted small game all along the vacant fields of South Main street and took long walks into the country north of the New York Central railroad. For many years Mr. Shaw was the only undertaker in the place, succeeding his father in the livery and undertaking business about 1870, and the books of the firm show that the father and son have laid away to rest in the cemeteries of Fairport and neighborhood, a greater number of people than are numbered to-day on our census rolls. There are few houses in the Village or vicinity where his business has not taken him and but a few families that have not found in him a friend in trouble.

 

Mr. Shaw is also a farmer of the farmers, having for several years cultivating a productive truck farm about a half a mile from the village, and may be called the pioneer of the cabbage and onion industry so extensively maintained throughout the section. In politics Mr. Shaw has always been a staunch Republican [the party of Lincoln], taking an active interest in the political affairs of his native town.

 

According to a brief notice in The Buffalo Commercial, May 21, 1892, Shaw met Rapalje that spring when both of them were part of a group that went on an extended Adirondack fishing trip. They must have liked each other and stayed in touch because Shaw, a life-long outdoorsman, participated in the fishing trip to the Beaver River country in May 1896 that resulted in the formation of the Rap-Shaw Club. Shaw returned to the Rap-Shaw camp for several weeks each year thereafter. He was vice-president of the club from its incorporation in 1901 until his death in 1911.

 

Given how often Shaw visited the club camp, its surprising that there are only two photographs of him in the club’s archives. Fortunately, Bill Poray, the Perinton Town Historian in Fairport, was able to find four more in their collection. The formal portrait at the top of this post came from him. Bill also located and reproduced from the original glass plates the following three photos of Shaw taken at the Rap-Shaw Witchhopple camp during deer season taken sometime between 1902 and 1906.

 

Leander Shaw died March 29, 1911, aged 74. An article describing his funeral that appeared in the Fairport Herald on April 5, 1911 noted Shaw often told his friends that his time spent at the Rap-Shaw Club were among his pleasantest memories. All his pallbearers were members of the club. The club also sent a unique floral arrangement.

 

The floral tributes from associates and friends were many and beautiful and one of them was particularly noticeably appropriate. It was from the members of the Adirondack [Rap-Shaw] club and consisted of a pack basket used by hunters in the woods, covered with galax leaves and filled with wood moss and lilies while across the front was a satin ribbon with gilt lettering reading “The last trail.” The bearers were these members of the club: Melvin Gardner of Fairport, Mr. Rapalje of Buffalo and Messrs. Servis, Fladd, Fonda, and Mutahler of Rochester. Six other members of the club from Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse were in attendance at the funeral as well as friends from Victor, Webster, Macedon and Pittsford.

  

In many ways Leander M. Shaw and John P. Rapalje were typical of middle-class business owners of the later part of the nineteenth century. They had deep rural roots, but they gave up farming to pursue more lucrative businesses, although Shaw did maintain a truck farm in his spare time. Their businesses prospered as did the towns where they lived, buoyed by growing populations. They kept in touch with their rural childhoods by taking fishing and hunting trips to the Beaver River country. By banding together into a club with similar men they became part of the vanguard of middle-class outdoor tourism that made the Adirondacks what it is today.