Anna Howard Shaw (February 14, 1847 – July 2, 1919) was a leader of the women's suffrage movement in the United States.

When Shaw was twelve years old, her father took "up claim of three hundred and sixty acres of land in the wilderness" of northern Michigan "and sent [her] mother and five young children to live there alone.

Shaw became very active during this period, helping her siblings refurbish their home and supporting her mother in her time of shock and despair.

"[1] Seeing her mother's emotional suffering, Shaw blamed her irresponsible father for "ha[ving] g[iven] no thought to the manner in which [their family was] to make the struggle and survive the hardships before [them].

"[1] While her invalid mother was overburdened with household chores", her father in Lawrence could freely dedicate "much time to the Abolition cause and big public movements of his day.

After the Civil War, she abandoned her teaching job and moved in with her married sister Mary in Big Rapids, Michigan.

While she recalls that she would have preferred more physical and active labor, such as digging ditches or shoveling coal, she was forced to pick up the "dreaded needle" and become a dressmaker, one of the more acceptable occupations available for women at the time.

[1][4] A pivotal moment in Shaw's life came when she met Reverend Marianna Thompson, a Universalist minister who came to preach in Grand Rapids.

At the age of twenty-four, Shaw was invited by H. C. Peck, a man looking to ordain a woman into ministry in the Methodist Episcopal Church, to give her first sermon.

"[1] With encouragement from Lucy Foot, Peck, and her close friend, Clara Osborn, Shaw agreed and gave her first sermon in Ashton, Michigan.

In 1880, after she and Anna Oliver were refused ordination by the Methodist Episcopal Church, despite passing with the top exam score that year.

"[9] During the early 20th century, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, NAWSA members, began employing militant techniques (e.g., picketing the White House during World War I) to fight for women's suffrage.

Nevertheless, Shaw maintained that she was "unalterably opposed to militancy, believing nothing of permanent value has ever been secured by it that could not have been more easily obtained by peaceful methods.

During World War I, Shaw was head of the Women's Committee of the United States Council of National Defense, for which she became the first woman to earn the Distinguished Service Medal.

Shaw died of pneumonia at her home in Moylan, Pennsylvania at the age of 72, only a few months before Congress ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.

[8] Shaw built a home at 240 Ridley Creek Rd., Media, during her tenure as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Assn.

[14][15] The suffragist anthem "Votes for Women: Suffrage Rallying Song" (1915) by married couple Edward M. and Marie Zimmerman was dedicated to Shaw.