Stuart B. Shotwell was born in 1819 in Washington Township, Harrison County, Ohio.  He attended Franklin College beginning in 1836, and after graduating he studied law in Cadiz in the law office of Dewey & Stanton.  In 1842 he was admitted to the Ohio state bar, and the same year he joined Chauncey Dewey in a new partnership of Dewey & Shotwell after the departure of Edwin Stanton.  Shotwell carried on the business under his own name after the retirement of Dewey in 1849.  In 1851, Shotwell married Nancy Gaston.  The couple had five children, including Walter Gaston Shotwell (b. 1856), a lawyer who trained in his father’s firm and later opened his own practice in Cadiz where this collection was likely stored at one time.  Stuart B. Shotwell died in Cadiz on December 3, 1890.