A biography of the late U.S. poet James Martin Shawhan is presented. He was born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on April 21, 1857. He migrated to Ohio in 1868. He settled in Marietta, Ohio, and worked as a barber. He published a volume of poems entitled "Unpolished Pebbles" in 1902. He died in Marietta in 1929.