Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Mr. Shaw used to say, when setting out these trees, that he was "planting them for posterity," as he did not expect to live to see them reach maturity. They were, however, of good size when he died in his ninetieth year, Sunday, Aug. 25, 1889.

"The death, peaceful and painless," says Mr. Dimmock, "occurred in his favorite room on the second floor of the old homestead, by the window of which he sat nearly every night for more than thirty years until the morning hours, absorbed in the reading which had been the delight of his life. This room was always plainly furnished, containing only a brass bedstead, tables, chairs, and the few books he loved to have near him. The windows looked out upon the old garden which was the first botanical beginning at Tower Grove.

"On Saturday, Aug. 31, after such ceremonial as St. Louis never before bestowed upon any deceased citizen, Henry Shaw was laid to rest in the mausoleum long prepared in the midst of the garden he had created—not for himself merely, but for the generations that shall come after him, and who, enjoying it, will 'rise up and call him blessed.'"

Mr. Shaw was beloved by his workmen for his uniform kindness to them. Once when a young boy who was visiting him, and walking with him in the garden, passed a lame workman, and did not speak, although Mr. Shaw said "Good-morning, Henry," the courteous old gentleman said, "Charles, you did not speak to Henry. Go back and say 'Good-morning' to him." Mr. Shaw employed many Bohemians, because he said, "They do not seem to be very popular with us, and I think I ought to help them all I can."

Mr. Shaw was always simple in his tastes and economical in his habits. He drove his one-horse barouche till his friends, owing to his infirmities from increasing age, prevailed upon him to have a carriage and a driver.

Four years before the death of Mr. Shaw he endowed a School of Botany as a department of Washington University, giving improved real estate yielding over $5,000 annually. He desired "to promote education and investigation in that science, and in its application to horticulture, arboriculture, medicine, and the arts, and for the exemplification of the Divine wisdom and goodness as manifested throughout the vegetable kingdom."

Dr. Asa Gray had been deeply interested in this movement, and twice visited St. Louis to consult with Mr. Shaw. By the recommendation of Dr. Gray, Mr. William Trelease, Professor of Botany in Wisconsin University at Madison, a graduate of Cornell University, and associated for some time with Professor Gray in various labors, was made Englemann Professor in the Henry Shaw School of Botany.

Professor Trelease was also made director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and has proved his fitness for the position by his high rank in scholarship, his contributions to literature, and his devotion to the work which Mr. Shaw felt satisfaction in committing to his care. His courtesy as well as ability have won him many friends. Mr. Shaw left by will various legacies to relatives and institutions, his property, invested largely in land, having become worth over a million dollars. He gave to hospitals, several orphan asylums, Old Ladies' Home, Girls' Industrial Home, Young Men's Christian Association, etc., but by far the larger part to his beloved garden. He wished it to be open every day of the week to the public, except on Sundays and holidays, the first Sunday in June and the first Sunday in September being exceptions to the rule. When the garden was opened the first Sunday of June, 1895, there were 20,159 visitors, and in September, though showery, 15,500.

Mr. Shaw bequeathed $1,000 annually for a banquet to the trustees of the garden, and literary and scientific men whom they choose to invite, thus to spread abroad the knowledge of the useful work the garden and schools of botany are doing; also $400 for a banquet to the gardeners of the institution, with the florists, nurserymen, and market-gardeners of St. Louis and vicinity. Each year $500 is to be used in premiums at flower-shows, and $200 for an annual sermon "on the wisdom and goodness of God as shown in the growth of flowers, fruits, and other products of the vegetable kingdom."

The Missouri Botanical Garden, Shaw's Garden as it is more commonly called, covering about forty-five acres, is situated on Tower Grove Avenue, about three miles southwest of the New Union Station. The former city residence of Mr. Shaw has been removed to the garden, in which are the herbarium and library, with 12,000 volumes. The herbarium contains the large collection of the late Dr. George Engelmann, about 100,000 specimens of pressed plants; and the general collection contains even more than this number of specimens from all parts of the world. The palms, the cacti, the tree-ferns, the fig-trees, etc., are of much interest. There is an observatory in the centre of the garden; and south of this, in a grove of shingle-oaks and sassafras-trees, is the mausoleum of Henry Shaw, containing a life-like reclining marble statue of the founder of the garden, with a full-blown rose in his hand.