Theodore Perry Shonts (May 5, 1855 – September 21, 1919) was an American lawyer and industrialist who served as chairman of the Panama Canal Commission and president of a number of important railways, including the Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York City and the Toledo, St. Louis and Western Railroad.

[5] After graduation from Monmouth College, he became an accountant and was employed by national banks in Iowa to standardize and simplify methods of bookkeeping before studying law and practicing for a short time in Centerville.

He became associated with General Francis Marion Drake, who had large financial and railroad interests, and who placed much of the management and construction into Shonts' hands.

With associates, he secured control of the Toledo, St. Louis and Western Railroad, commonly known as the Clover Leaf Road, which he rehabilitated and made successful.

[28] Through his eldest daughter Theodora,[29][30] he was a grandfather of Emmanuel Théodore Bernard Marie II d'Albert de Luynes (1908–1980), Duke of Chaulnes and Picquigny.

[31] Through his daughter Marguerite, he was a grandfather of Theodore Rutherford Glenn Bingham (1919–1944), who was born in Cuba and was declared Missing in Action in February 1944 in Ii, Finland, aged 24, during World War II;[32] he married Ardath Crane "Noni" Smith in 1943, a daughter of millionaire Clifford Warren Smith (who later married actress Claire Luce).