Able to read before he could distinctly articulate the name of them, nothing afforded him greater pleasure, than some little volume, suited to his comprehension.

Immediately after his graduation he moved to Philadelphia to become private secretary to his uncle, President John Adams.

He returned to Boston after Adams' defeat by Thomas Jefferson and in April 1801 began the study of law in the offices of William Sullivan.

Shaw was a founder of The Anthology Society, a literary club formed in October 1805[2] to take responsibility for the publication a Boston literary gazette, the Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, of which Shaw became the fourth editor.

Let economy, industry, amiableness, intelligence and virtue, be among the higher requisites, while beauty and fortune are but secondary objects.

"[6] In his will Shaw bequeathed his considerable collection of newspapers, coins, pamphlets and books to the Boston Athenæum which also houses his archives.

Shaw's prodigious literary scrounging is the primary reason that the Boston Athenæum has in its collection over 7,000 linear feet of newspapers, tracts and pamphlets.

Charles Knowles Bolton, the seventh librarian at the Boston Athenæum, in his history of that institution passes along the following telling anecdote: The Essex Institute has recently presented to the Library [of the Boston Athenæum] a legal essay written by Judge William Tudor, on the back of which, in the handwriting of the first librarian, William S. Shaw, I find an amusing statement never before printed, part of which reads as follows: 'Judge Tudor wrote these observations and presented them to me.

Shaw along together with some of his professional and literary friends famously interceded on behalf American historian, Hannah Adams, in her 1804 conflict with Rev.

Jedidiah Morse regarding the use of Adams' book A Summary History of New England in Boston schools.

[9] Previous to this legal dust-up, Shaw and his friends had taken up a subscription to provide Adams with some financial support.

Adams writes: During this visit at Boston, I received the unexpected intelligence, that a number of benevolent gentlemen had settled an annuity upon me, to relieve me from the embarrassments I had hitherto suffered.

This providential interference excited my most lively gratitude to my generous benefactors, and I hope I sensibly felt my deep obligation to the source of all good.[10]Mrs.

Hannah F. Lee, the friend who wrote the additional notices in Adams' memoir, adds: "After [Rev.

Dr. Joseph Stevens Buckminster] became the Pastor of Brattle Street Church, he, with Mr. Higginson, and Mr. Shaw the active founder of the Athenæum, proposed to Miss Adams, who, from an enfeebled constitution, had begun to grow infirm, to remove to Boston; at the same time procuring for her, through the liberal subscription of a few gentlemen, an annuity for life.

"[11] In addition to fending off Jedidiah Morse and contributing to her annuity, Shaw also arranged for Hannah Adams to use the library at the Boston Athenæum for her research.

[12] In addition to his storied literary pursuits, William Smith Shaw was throughout his professional life a practicing attorney with considerable business interests.

The partnership was "to continue and be in force for during the term of the patent right of Odiomes nail machines[13] (ten years)..." Today the Town of Gardiner is in Maine but in 1814 it was still part of Massachusetts.

[14] At the time of entering into the partnership agreement with Shaw, Gardiner owned two mill dams on the Cobbopeecontee River.

In the agreement Shaw agrees to pay Gardiner five dollars per year for rental of land next to the second mill dam as well as "the sum of twelve and a half cents per annum for each square inch that the gate shall measure at said second dam through which the water shall run to said factor."

Hale cites a legal case that defined a square inch of water power as follows: "A square inch of water under a given head is the quantity of water that under the given head will flow in a stream having a section of one inch square, the discharge being made freely into the air, the head measured above the center of the orifice and section of the stream measured where it is the smallest.

Field, Peter S. The Birth of Secular High Culture: "The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review" and Its Critics.