page_title: Shaw House (Ferndale, California)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Shaw House (Ferndale, California) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Isabella Shaw, wife of Seth Shaw, by his brother Stephen W. Shaw, California '49er and San Francisco Portrait Painter. Seth and Isabella Shaw lived in the Shaw House (Ferndale, California), the first post office and courthouse of Ferndale as well as their private residence. Mr. Shaw was postmaster and justice of the peace as well as an active Mason. Original painting is about 18 x 20 inches on canvas. Note damage repair following vandalism while portrait hung in the Shaw house during the 1960s. Painting is in private collection; removed from wall and photographed with permission of owner and descendant of Mrs. Shaw.
context_page_description: The Shaw House, also known as the Shaw House Inn, is a historic Carpenter Gothic Victorian style house located at 703 Main Street in Ferndale, Humboldt County, California. It served historically as a courthouse, a post office, and a single-family dwelling.
context_section_description: The Shaw House was built in 1854 by Seth Shaw, who with his brother Stephen W. Shaw had arrived by canoe in 1852 to build a cabin, clear some land, claim it and found the town of Ferndale. Despite long-standing local legend, the house was not inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, but rather by the home of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo in Sonoma, California which had been drawn and painted by Stephen W. Shaw. In the early days, the Shaw House served as the area's first courthouse as well as post office.
  The building was owned by the family, vacant for several years at the end, until sold in 1967.  Fully restored by two owners, the Shaw House was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 13, 1984.
  It remains the oldest house in Ferndale and functions as a bed and breakfast under the Shaw House Inn name.  It still features the marble fireplace that Isabella Shaw, Seth's bride, picked out at Gump's in San Francisco.
caption: Isabella Shaw, painted by her brother-in-law, Stephen W. Shaw
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