His father was Walter Shaw, manufacturer of Machine Tools who was described as "a man of integrity" and a Christian.
Archibald Shaw was a proud Englishman whose conversion to Christ led him to love and serve Africans.
was one of the societies invited by Lord Cromer, the British resident in Egypt, to begin work in the Southern region of the Sudan.
[1] Gwynne led the party and Dr Albert Cook came up from Uganda to meet them on arrival at their Dinka landing place.
He too might have given up had he agreed to leave his post when very ill with malaria and pressed by the Governor General to do so when he called with his steamer at Malek.
Shaw continued to make the East Bank Bor Dinka his speciality throughout his mission.
[3] This occupied more and more of his time in the last years of his active missionary service and was continued with considerable success after his retirement despite the obvious difficulties caused by being away from Sudan.
He recognised the obligation of translators to make a real contribution to vernacular secular literature also and his work in this field included a Reading Primer, a hygiene book, a manuscript issued by the Ministry of Education entitled "Travel by Land", which reached 14 pages with pictures, and was circulated by the Department for use in schools.
Abraham Chep Adongwei, one of his helpers who remembered Shaw after his death, for his love of Jieng (Dinka) community by bringing them together as true Christians and working for environmental change by planting trees.
Jon e Aruor, the first baptised Christian at Malek, said this about Shaw after he retired: “years ago, before the white men came, when the Dinka wished to send an important message, they chose the strongest and bravest warriors to go.
And when you first brought the message of the gospel to us you sent your strongest and bravest warriors like Archdeacon Shaw and Bishop Gwynne.”[4]