Henry Shaw was a physician, and the older brother of Nana Burt's father. He summered on the Cape in Cohasset, and practiced medicine in Boston. He was 25 when Emily Dickinson came to Boston to consult a physician about her eyes; Shaw may have known the physician, whose name I think may be lost, who treated the young poet of Amherst.

The following story was told to me by my aunt, Dorothy Ogilvie, one Summer at Weld around 1989. Aunt Dottie said,

"Uncle Henry supported my mother's family. He was very proud of his younger brother's heroism during the Civil War; and felt great compassion because his younger brother had come home wounded. Uncle Henry was a very strong influence in other matters also. He had been strongly opposed to the marriage of his niece (Leila Root Shaw) to F. Allen Burt; in fact, he was generally very opposed to marriage. There was a reason.

At 47 years old, Uncle Henry was married in Cambridge, Mass in Rev. Wm. McKenzie's church on April 24, 1884 to Annie Whipple. On their wedding night he had taken the bridal suite at the finest hotel on Copley Square. That night after the wedding Annie was said to have been found wandering through Copley Square in a nightdress. Henry renounced the marriage and never married again. He supported Annie who would spend her days shopping, and thereafter counseled family members to avoid marriage. Three of the five children of John Hamilton Shaw and Isadora Fanny Howe Shaw never married, perhaps because of the influence of their uncle."