My Genealogy Hound

DR. ORRIN C. SHAW was born in Groton, Tompkins county, New York, May 2, 1848. He has two brothers living, viz.; Dr. M. B. Shaw, of Eden, Erie county, N. Y., and L. B. Shaw, formerly a druggist of Ripley, this county, now residing in Chicago. He had one brother, Heston O., who died in 1867, and one sister, Helen Jane, who married William B. Perry, of Ripley; she died in 1879.

Dr. O. C. Shaw followed the peregrinations of his father in his youth, received his education in the public and High schools of Ripley, followed teaching one or two terms and during vacations read medicine in his brother’s office at Eden. He entered Buffalo Medical college in the latter part of 1870, from which he graduated in 1873. The latter part of 1873 was spent in practice with his brother. Dr. M. B. Shaw, and in 1874 he commenced independent practice at Hamburg. He went to Cherry Creek, stayed there a year and then came to Kennedy where he has since resided. He is a skillful physician and has met with such remarkable success with difficult cases that his reputation is more than local. Politically he is a republican, has served on the county committee and has taken a deep interest in promoting the success of the party. He belongs to the Baptist church and is connected with the Masons, Odd Fellows, United Workmen and Royal Templars of Temperance.

On September 2, 1875, he married Annie C. Dieffenbeck, a daughter of John Dieifenbeck. Two children have been born to Dr. and Mrs. Shaw: Ocie M. and Beula M., aged respectively eleven and nine years. Mrs. Shaw was educated at Eden and Hamburg and before her marriage to Dr. Shaw was a teacher in the public schools and was considered possessed of superior skill and tact. She was secretary of the Political Equality club and has been active in organizing branches of that society throughout the county.

Dr. O. C. Shaw is a son of Dr. S. H. and Eleanora (Woodruff) Shaw, the former a native of Groton, Tompkins county, N. Y., born November 29, 1817. Dr. S. H. Shaw was educated in the common schools and academy at Groton and finished at the Oneida institute in the county of the same name. He followed teaching some eighteen years, commencing when sixteen years of age. During these years, in his vacations, he studied medicine with an older brother. Dr. Isaac Shaw, of Cayuga, and later with Dr. John H. Thorp of Whitesville, Allegany county, this State, where he began practice; since then he has been in practice in Ripley, this county, and North Collins, Erie county, until December, 1889, when from the infirmities of age, he abandoned active practice and removed to Kennedy with his youngest son, Dr. O. C, where he now resides, having been in active practice some forty years. He is a member of the Congregational church and has actively identified himself with its work. He was a pioneer teacher in Chautauqua county and served on the board of examiners and has been elected to several local offices, now serving as justice of the peace for the village of Kennedy. Politically he is a republican, having cast his first presidential vote for “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” Grandfather, George Shaw, (father of S. H. Shaw), was born in Ware, Mass., the year that the American Colonies proclaimed their independence, and died in Steuben county in 1860. He married Jane Hopkins, daughter of Isaac Hopkins, a native of Salem, N. Y., and had ten children — but two now living: Dr. S. H. Shaw and Dr. George R. Shaw, of Antigo, Wisconsin. He served in the war of 1812 as a private in Col. Mahan’s regiment and witnessed the burning of Buffalo.

Politically he was a whig. He was a man of strong, healthy constitution, never having been sick a day of his life, and the summer he was eighty-two he mowed fifty acres with a scythe. That fall he broke both bones of his leg below the knee and was told by his son, Dr. S. H. Shaw, who dressed it, that he probably would never be able to walk on that limb again but here the prognosis was a failure for the next summer he walked twelve miles one day and back the next.