[2] The first Shoemaker was a Quaker who arrived in Germantown, Pennsylvania, from Holland in 1685, but was whose family came from the Palatinate region of Germany.

Naval Academy for Shoemaker through President Abraham Lincoln, he declined so he could see immediate action, eventually fighting in the Battles of Shiloh, Wrightsville, and Gettysburg,[2] achieving the rank of First Lt. in the United States Volunteers.

[2] Shoemaker eventually owned the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Drayton Railroad (which he expanded to over 2,000 miles long),[4] had a controlling interest in the Cleveland, Lorain and Wheeling Railway, and held directorships in the Texas Pacific Railroad, the Chatham National Bank (which eventually merged into JPMorgan Chase), and the North American Trust Company.

[5] Blanche, the sole daughter of railroad magnate and diplomat Col. James W. Quiggle of Philadelphia, was a descendent of Richard Buffington, an agent for William Penn who came to Pennsylvania from England in 1675.

They spent their summers at "Restless Oaks", the Quiggle family estate in McElhattan, Pennsylvania (near Lock Haven) and at "Cedar Cliff", an "opulent Victorian residence" in Riverside, Connecticut.