متصرفية جبل لبنان
Shadid was born in 1882 in Marjayoun, a town in modern Lebanon, but then in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate. He was the youngest of 12 children. He attended the American University's high school in Beirut. In 1898 he emigrated to the United States where he was a pack peddler and sold cheap jewelry and buttons door to door.