“It was Alexander,” says John C. Shapleigh, “who set the tone.” A merchant and ship owner in Devonshire, Alexander sailed to America in his own ship, Benediction, in 1635. The house he put up at Kittery Point, in what’s now Maine, was “the first house there bylt,” according to the records of the York court. His descendants held offices of trust with the Crown and were rewarded with land, but the love of the sea never left. And when Capt. Richard Shapleigh’s ship wrecked in the 1820s, his son August Frederick found work as a hardware clerk to help support the family.
A few decades later, A.F. was running one of the biggest businesses in the Gateway City, supplying axes, saws, hatchets, nails, rough hinges, bear traps, knives, scythes, spades, violins, and harmonicas to the westward bound—and in 1848, picks and shovels to Forty-Niners bound for gold.
A.F.’s fleet would grow to almost 300 traveling salesmen—guys like “Hardware Charlie” Fach who crossed the country, headed south to Mexico, or sailed to Europe to sell American hardware. The bustling revenue helped make St. Louis the fourth city in the nation. By the time of his death at 92, A.F. had become a director of the Merchants National Bank and president of the Phoenix Insurance Company, had interests in several mining companies, and had handed off the hardware business to three of his sons, urging them to practice absolute fairness and pay a just wage. The fourth son, John Blasdel, had studied medicine, traveling to Vienna to become an ear specialist, then returning to the faculty of what’s now Washington University School of Medicine.
At least one of A.F.’s grandsons inherited his nerve: “Fred W. Shapleigh and Miss June Niederlander Elope,” the headline read. “Wed at Alton, Where They First Met and Loved.” The bride was just 19, daughter of the president of Westinghouse Automatic Air & Steam Coupler Company, and “the wedding was the outcome of a pretty romance” begun five years earlier, when Fred was studying at Western Military Academy and June was summering in Godfrey, Ill. The two met at church, and before summer’s end they were engaged. The elopement, still too soon in their parents’ book, was neatly executed: Fred’s telegram read simply, “June and I are married. Will wire when and where to send the trunks.”
Skip ahead a generation, and you’ll find the Shapleigh business acumen, undiluted, in Warren, who became CEO of Ralston Purina. He graduated from Yale in 1942 and spent three years chasing submarines in the Pacific. But when he entered the business world, he did so coolly. William Stiritz would later call him “patrician,” with an “analytical mind that penetrated the smoke and mirrors of business economics.” A classic photo, used in Warren’s obit in the Beacon, shows him in a cableknit sweater, sailing in New England. But most of each year he focused on business, mentoring, and civic life. He loved the Missouri Botanical Garden and spent five decades on its board; cared about the arts and helped Washington University move forward in art and architecture; understood philanthropy and spent 17 years as president of the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Foundation. His daughter Jane Shapleigh Mackey was a Veiled Prophet queen and has continued his interest in cultural institutions—MICDS, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and Forest Park Forever. Her daughter, Jane Shapleigh Mackey Foster, was a Veiled Prophet special maid.
Now jump to another branch, and you’ll see the rogue Shapleigh trait, that rebelliously insistent devotion to medicine, pop up in Warren’s cousin, presciently named John Blasdel II. He became a hematologist/oncologist and went to England to learn about the new hospice movement. Then he returned to St. Louis to help start the first hospice programs here. He led the push for a free-standing hospice, where people who didn’t have a home or loved ones could die in comfort and peace. “You matter to the last moment of your life,” he once told a reporter.
And he did, says his son, John C. Shapleigh, who helped his dad create the Hospice Foundation of Greater St. Louis to educate both physicians and patients about a gentler path to a good death. A lawyer and entrepreneur, John pursued the contemporary version of metal hardware, co-founding two St. Louis-based companies providing fiber optic telecommunications networks.
“My grandfather took over the company in the early ’40s,” Rush Shapleigh says. “When he moved out to Fordyce Lane, everybody thought he was crazy to go out that far. Ladue Road was a dirt road. He had 10 acres on Fordyce Lane, a barn and ponies the kids would ride, and we had family dinners there”—except during the summer, which he spent sailing back East, thirsty for the sea.
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