author
Hazel Yearsley Shaw
Best known for a detailed early-20th-century study of commerce on the Ohio River, this writer explored how trade and transportation helped shape the American West. Her surviving work reads like a careful piece of historical detective work.
1 Audiobook
The Ohio River Trade, 1788-1830
by Hazel Yearsley Shaw
About the author
Hazel Yearsley Shaw is known for The Ohio River Trade, 1788-1830, a historical study first submitted as a master's thesis at the University of Illinois in 1908. Project Gutenberg and library records identify her as the author, and the text itself presents her as "Hazel Yearsley Shaw, A.B., 1907," showing her academic background just before the thesis was completed.
Her book examines the Ohio River as a major route for migration, shipping, and regional growth in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Rather than writing fiction or memoir, she focused on research-driven history, tracing boats, goods, trading practices, and the development of river towns in a period of rapid expansion.
Confirmed biographical details about her life beyond this publication are limited in the sources I could verify. What is clear is that her work has remained accessible through major public-domain and library collections, which has helped preserve her place as a contributor to early American historical scholarship.