Major D.A. Shaw, one of the earliest residents of Redlands, is a man whose busy and varied career is difficult to condense into the narrow limits of an article necessarily brief. Born in 1826, he spent most of his youth in northern New York. At 17 he commenced teaching and was afterward associated with Benjamin F. Taylor, poet and author, as assistant teacher in an academy; was also a writer for the Western Citizen, a free-soil paper. He went overland to California in 1850, returned east two years later by way of Central America, and the following season again came overland as captain of a company of thirty wagons and sixty people, bringing a band of fine American horses. On this trip he met the lady who became his wife in San Francisco in 1854. Three sons and three daughters were born of this marriage, all of whom are residents of California.
Mrs. Shaw died May 8, 1894, and at Los Angeles, Cal.., on October 14, 1985, he married Mrs. C.B. Alderman, of Goshen, Ind. Returning east about the time of the outbreaking of the Civil War, Major Shaw engaged in merchandising and real estate. He held several important public offices and was commissioned major of the Eleventh Minnesota state troops at the time of the Indian outbreak in 1863. He was also a member of the state legislature. He was admitted to the bar in Minnesota and later in California. He has written extensively for the press, and has held prominent offices in the Masonic and Good Templar societies and the Pioneer Association. Coming to Redlands in 1878, he purchased a ranch of 160 acres, which is now occupied by himself and sons, and is mostly planted out to fruit and highly developed. A view taken of a section of his apricot orchard is to be seen elsewhere in this publication.
(Source: Illustrated Redlands, 1897, p. 62.)
