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Archive for the ‘Reed’ Category

A Family Needed for Rebecca Carr Reed

My Reed family preserved information about our ancestors beginning with their migration from Kentucky to Coles County, Illinois in 1829. We knew that Thomas Reed (1783-1852) made this trip with his family when the Illinois land opened for settlement. We did not know who his parents were.

After diligent research in the Kentucky records, my dad’s Reed cousins determined that Thomas was the son of Caleb Reed. They guessed the mother’s name was Rebecca [Carr?], but they never found documentation for this.

Other Reed researchers have made the same claim about the mother’s identity. Rebecca Carr, mother of Thomas and wife of Caleb, appears on the unified family tree on the Family Search website. How accurate is this information?

The first name Rebecca seems correct. Shelby County, Kentucky marriage records contain a permission from Rebecca and Caleb Reed for their daughter Sally to marry Thomas Johns in 1799. This source is cited on the Family Search page for Rebecca Carr Reed. Family Search provides no source for her maiden name.

Much of the other information for Rebecca seems on this site seems suspect. She was purportedly 13 years older than her husband. They went on to have 7 children together beginning when Rebecca was 41 and ending when she was 59. It seems unlikely that she was born in 1740 as the site claims.

Some of the grandchildren carried the middle name Carr, lending weight to the hypothesis that Rebecca was a Carr. The Reeds had Carr neighbors in Kentucky.

If Rebecca was a Carr, more information is needed to verify this claim.

The 1799 marriage permission, signed by Rebecca, was an exciting find. So far, it is the only document we have located that includes her name. Now we need something that provides a better birth date and places her into her natal family.

 

A Reed Family in Early Kentucky

Thomas Reed (1785-1852) was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Kentucky and later settled in Coles County, Illinois. My father’s cousins had done a tremendous amount of genealogical work on his family, but newer sources have become available from home since they compiled their information. This year I have worked to see what I can add to Thomas’ story.

We know he went to Kentucky with his family when he was a boy. The family settled there along Elk Creek by 1792, the year Kentucky became a state. Thomas’ father Caleb appeared on the tax list for Shelby County that year. Thomas was about 7 years old.

Their part of Shelby County was carved out into the new Spencer County about three decades later in 1824 while Thomas still lived there. The search for Thomas in the records thus requires work in both counties.

Working backwards timewise, I began with Spencer County. Family Search has several records from this county available online. I was able to view marriages, the Court Order Book, tax records, probate and guardian records, and Commissioner’s deeds.

From these records I learned that Thomas’ older brother Caleb C. Reed died about 1828, a date we did not know before. The Court Order book and the guardian files told me that Caleb’s wife Prudence (Kirkham) Reed was named guardian of their children.

Thomas and Caleb C., along with their younger brother John, jointly owned a tract of land in Spencer County. They had paid for it in installments. When the time came for them to receive the deed, Caleb C. was dead and so were some of the grantors. Title to the land needed to be sorted out by the Court. The story was told in the Court Order Book and the Commissioner’s Deed book. Thomas, John, and Caleb C.’s children received title to the land.

As I continue my search into Thomas’ life, I will turn next to the Shelby County records. The Reed cousins gave me a history of Shelby County, and I have already reviewed it. Over the next few days, I hope to look at Shelby records like the ones available for Spencer County.

Armed with that information, I will head out on a road trip through Kentucky this summer. I plan to stop in Taylorsville, the county seat of Spencer County, to look at their genealogical holdings. I will also spend some time in the genealogy stacks at the Louisville, Kentucky library.

Doing research in the time of America’s early republic is new territory for me. I want to know all I can about Thomas and his life.

A Visit to the South

Now that it is spring, I find myself planning another genealogy road trip. We will go south this time to visit historic sites, cemeteries, and perhaps a library or two.

Our sight-seeing loop will include places I always have hoped to see:

  1. Chalmette National Cemetery in Louisiana. My second great-grandfather, Daniel Ryan, was re-interred here when it was built for Union Civil War dead.
  2. Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi. Another great-grandfather’s cousin, George Boyd, fought and died here during the Civil War.
  3. St. Augustine, Florida. We will tour this oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the United States.
  4. Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The American Civil War began with the battle here.
  5. Cowpens National Battlefield in South Carolina. I do not know whether any of my Carter relatives participated in the Revolutionary War battle at Cowpens, but we will take a look at the area as we pass through.
  6. Fort Boonesborough State Park in Madison County, Kentucky. Several ancestors lived in this county. One, Robert Kirkham, served here during the Revolutionary War.
  7. Lindsborg, Kansas. We will stop here to check out the biennial Swedish Festival. We are not Swedish, but we are part Scandinavian. The food and entertainment should be good.

We have completed most of the planning for this trip. The only detail left to determine is whether to stop at the municipal libraries in the Louisville, Kentucky area.

I need to search their online catalogs to see what they may have that is not available digitally. Family Search has a rich store of records for Shelby and Spencer counties where my Reed ancestors resided. To find anything more than that might require an archival visit. That would be beyond the scope of the trip we envision.

 

Kentucky Reeds

When land in eastern Illinois opened for settlement, Thomas Reed (1783-1852) and his wife Ann Kirkham (1783-1869) arrived in Coles County with their children in 1829. They were in their mid-40’s by then and had lived their adult lives so far in Kentucky. Their Illinois years have been well documented by the Reed family, but we do not know a lot about the couple’s time in the Bluegrass state.

Ann was born there, in what become Nelson County, but Thomas arrived in Kentucky from Pennsylvania when he was a boy. His family settled in Shelby County, along Elk Creek in an area that became Spencer County in 1824.

Several Reeds resided in the same area, and sorting them into family groups presents a challenge. Census records survive although they do not name everyone in the household. The Reeds repeated first names, adding to the confusion.

Thomas and Ann married in Nelson County, where her family lived, about 1806. The 1810 census is the first record for their household. They lived among the other Reed families in Shelby County. This census record presents a couple of questions:

  1. Two boys under the age of ten resided with Thomas. One must be his eldest son Robertson Reed, born in 1808. Who was the other boy? Another son who died young and whose memory was lost to the Reeds? A nephew? Or daughter Eliza, born in October 1810, and mistakenly enumerated as a boy? The official census day that year was August 6, so Eliza should not have been counted even if the census taker visited after she was born.
  2. The family immediately preceding Thomas on the page was headed by Caleb Reed, a man over 45. Who was this Caleb? Thomas had both a father and a brother with that name. Caleb’s household included three children under 10 and two more aged 10-16. There were no adults other than a probable wife who was also over 45. Caleb the father was 54 in 1810, but none of his known children would have been under 10 that year. The brother Caleb was probably younger than 45 in 1810, and he was unmarried with no known children in 1810. The Caleb on the census record does not fit the profile of either Thomas’ father or his brother.

Family relationships and vital statistics for the Reeds in Shelby County during the early 1800’s remain unclear. Much work remains to do in the county records to assemble the Reed family that lived there.

When Was Thomas Reed Married?

Kentucky marriage records can be viewed online for weddings as early as 1795. Some of my ancestors lived and married in Kentucky at the beginning of the 1800’s. This week I needed to verify a date by looking at these early records.

As I reviewed research notes from my Reed cousins, I came across a curious discrepancy for the marriage date of our ancestors Thomas Reed (1783-1852) and Anne Kirkham (1783-1869).

Our family history The Reeds of Ashmore by Michael Hayden, written in 1988, reports their marriage date as 24 Nov 1806. This date is repeated in Coles County, Illinois county histories compiled during the 1870s.

The original notes for the Reed book contain a reference to another researcher’s claim that the marriage took place two years later, on 6 Oct 1808. My cousins discounted this idea and went with the 1806 date when they compiled the book.

Good genealogical practice dictates that conflicts must be resolved, and this date difference presents a big conflict.

I turned to FamilySearch for more information. There I found images of Kentucky marriage bonds, returns, and a Nelson County, KY marriage register. What did they tell me about Thomas’ marriage date?

  • The 24 Nov 1806 date used by my cousins and the county history belongs to the date of the marriage bond, not the marriage ceremony. On that day, Thomas Reed and Anne’s brother Henry Kirkham bound themselves for the sum of 50 pounds for a marriage between Thomas and Anne to be solemnized “soon”.
  • A marriage did take place, evidenced by a return from the Officiant Reuben Smith. This marriage return is undated, and it does not provide a marriage date.
  • The Nelson County, KY marriage register also verifies this marriage of Thomas Reed and Anne Kirkham, performed by Reuben Smith. The given date, 6 Oct 1808, matches the one claimed by the other researcher. It must have been her source.

My cousins, then, had only the 1806 date of the marriage bond. The register reports that the marriage took place two years later, in 1808. This seems odd.

On a hunch, I turned to the beginning of the register book and found an interesting disclaimer. This register was compiled from an older register in the summer of 1873. It says that marriage bond dates in the new volume are accurate, but the dates of the marriages themselves may not be. It refers to marriage certificates as the best source for information.

So, what about Thomas’ marriage?

It seems clear that he executed a marriage bond on 24 Nov 1806. Because the marriage return includes no date, we do not know whether he went on to marry the same day the bond was executed or at some later date. But did he wait nearly 2 years to marry, until after the birth of his first son in August 1808, as the marriage register states?

I suspect the couple married after the date of the marriage bond, sometime in late 1806 or early 1807. Without a marriage certificate I will never know the exact date. This document was not passed down through my branch of the family, and I do not know whether it has been preserved.

My cousins had the marriage bond date, not the marriage date. The other researcher had the date reported in the marriage register, an admitted probable miscalculation.

Neither could claim the correct date for the Reed marriage. That date is unknown.

 

New Clues in Old Kentucky

This year I am focusing my research on my third great-grandparents, Thomas Reed (1783-1852) and Ann Kirkham (1782-1869).

The first step was to review and analyze all the material I have collected concerning their children. They had five who reached adulthood:

  1. Robertson Mitchell Reed (1808-1871).
  2. Eliza Reed McAlister Walton (1810-1886).
  3. Jane Reed Galbreath (1817-1899).
  4. Caleb Reed (1818-1903).
  5. William Reed (1822-1845).

To accomplish this task, I emptied my Reed bin of everything concerning Thomas and his children. I also pulled all the pertinent Reed folders from the genealogy filing cabinet I inherited from a Reed cousin.

Much of her material duplicated my own research, and I was able to discard many extra copies of documents. Then I made sure to enter all the evidence into my database.

In the filing cabinet, I found a few papers I had not seen before.

One was an 1817 Kentucky land conveyance to Thomas Reed and his two brothers Caleb and John. The grantor parties included a man named Robert Robertson. I know nothing of this man, but I have often wondered why Thomas named his eldest son Robertson. Was the Robert Robertson in the land transaction the inspiration for Robertson Reed’s name? Was he related to Reeds?

The other discovery I made concerned a childhood friend of Thomas’ son, Caleb. The friend’s name was Robert Boyd, and I learned they had known one another in Spencer County, Kentucky. The two of them relocated to Coles County, Illinois and eventually married Carter sisters.

Now I am wondering whether Caleb Reed and Robert Boyd were more closely related than just in-laws. Caleb’s maternal grandmother was Jane Boyd, so it is possible that Robert Boyd was a member of her family.

A Boyd researcher has told me that they have reached a brick wall with the Kentucky Boyds. This line is crying out for further research. Perhaps the Reed/Kirkham connection to the Boyds offers a valuable clue.

Reviewing Reed documents already in my possession has uncovered some interesting avenues for learning more about the Reed family. The Robertson and the Boyd affiliations might give me a better understanding of my Reed line.

It Runs in Families

This year I am focusing my research on my third great-grandparents, Thomas Reed (1783-1852) and Ann Kirkham (1782-1869). They were among the original settlers in Coles County, Illinois in 1829.

One of their closest neighboring families, the McAlisters, settled there about the same time. The eldest two of the Reed children married McAlister siblings.

Healthwise, these marriages did not turn out well. The McAlister family had a pattern of early death:

  1. Robertson Reed (1808-1871) married Nancy McAlister (1815-1853). This couple had five known children before Nancy died at age 37. All but one of their children died young, too, including Daniel at age 23, Nancy Jane at age 34, William Fred at age 30, and Mary E. at age 19. Nancy Jane was the only child from this marriage to wed, but both her children died in infancy. Robertson and Nancy (McAlister) Reed have no descendants.
  2. Eliza Reed (1810-1886) married John Mitchell McAlister (1812-1836). The had one daughter before he passed away around the age of 24. The daughter Susan Ann (1835-1856), along with her only child, died from complications of childbirth when Susan was 20 years old. Eliza (Reed) and John McAlister have no descendants.

These Reed siblings who married into the McAlister family experienced much heartache. Robertson Reed lost his wife and outlived his oldest son. Several of his other children died about the same time he did. Eliza Reed McAlister witnessed the deaths of both a young husband and their daughter.

Both Robertson and Eliza remarried after the deaths of their first spouses. Their second marriages produced more children who lived long lives.

And what of the McAlisters? I have not done much research on this family. Their name does not survive in Coles County. Perhaps they died out, or maybe the surviving family members moved away.

The Reeds and the McAlisters had become fast friends when they first settled in Illinois. They must have had high hopes when their children joined in marriage. Those dreams were dashed when the McAlister grandchildren did not survive. Death at a young age stalked their family.

Robertson Reed Family Unveiled

Caleb Reed (1818-1903) was my second great-grandfather. He had an older brother named Robertson Reed (1808-1871). The details of Robertson’s family have eluded Reed researchers over the years.

Turns out that the reason for including little of their information in the 1988 The Reeds of Ashmore by my distant cousin Michael Hayden is that Robertson left few, if any, descendants.

Robertson lived in Ashmore Township, Coles County, Illinois. He was married twice and had seven children:

  1. Daniel. The unsourced Reed history calls him Daniel T. Reed (1836-1859) and says he never married. Daniel was listed on the 1850 US census as a 14-year-old in his father’s household. In 1860, a Dan Reed was on the Coles County mortality schedule. Dan P. Reed, 23, of Pleasant Valley Township had died in March (1860?) of lung fever. Were Daniel T. and Dan P. the same person? There is a FindAGrave memorial for Daniel Reed who was buried in the Reed Cemetery, but it claims the child lived only 2 months in 1837. Although these records conflict, it does seen clear that Robertson’s son Daniel had no children.
  2. Nancy Jane. She (1838-1872) and her husband Hezekiah Ashmore remained in the Ashmore area and had seven children. Robertson Reed may have Ashmore descendants.
  3. Caleb Robertson. “R” (1841-1903) inherited his father’s land. He never married.
  4. William Fred. This son (1844-1875) left Ashmore and went to Texas to work. He died there having never married. His body was returned to Ashmore to be buried there.
  5. Mary E. This young woman (1852-1872) never married.
  6. Joseph Van. He (1857-1936) survived the San Francisco earthquake and settled in Eugene, Oregon. He had a step-daughter.
  7. Anna Belle. This daughter (1860-1927) proved tricky to trace. A county history claimed she married Skyler Glassco from a local family. Further research revealed that she had not married a Glassco but instead a Glasgow. Anna Belle and Schuyler Glasgow eventually settled in Texarkana, Texas and had at least three children. One, Clara Glasgow Ellis, is buried near where I live. Anna Belle may have had other descendants as well.

From this, we see that of Robertson Reed’s seven children, only two daughters had families. There were no Reed-surnamed descendants, only Ashmores and Glasgows.

If Robertson has descendants who are living today, they have not turned up as DNA matches to my father or me. I still do not know whether Robertson’s line has just daughtered out or has ended altogether.

The Reeds and a Natural Disaster

American Ancestors, the family history center for the New England Historic Genealogical Society, puts out a genealogy related survey every week. Not long ago they asked whether an ancestor had been involved in a natural disaster.

I answered “no” because I was not aware of anyone who had been so affected. This week I learned that I may have such a connection after all.

I have come across an intriguing obituary that mentions my grandfather’s second cousin, Margueritte Reed (1894-1985), and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Here is the backstory. Our common ancestor Thomas Reed (1783-1852) settled in Coles County, Illinois. I am descended from the second son, Caleb (1818-1903). Caleb’s older brother and Margueritte’s ancestor was Robertson Mitchell Reed (1808-1871).

Robertson was married twice and had two families. When the Reeds in Illinois attempted to put together a family history during the 1980’s, they could find little information on the second wife, Margaret Potts (1819-1871) and her children. No one seemed to know how many children there were or what became of them.

An article in The History of Coles County, Illinois (1876) claims Robertson and Margaret had 4 children: James W. (1857); Kate L. (1859); Joseph V. who married a Gould and went to Eugene, OR; and Anna Belle who married Schyler Glassco and went to Alabama. I decided to search again for the fate of these children, beginning with boys since they are easier to trace.

I found no record of James W. Reed born in 1857.

I did locate Joseph Van Reed, son of Margaret and Robertson Reed, who was born that same year. Could these sons, James and Joseph, be the same person? At least one Reed descendant thought Joseph was nicknamed James, but I have found no proof of this.

Leaving that question aside for now, I continued to look into the life of Joseph Reed.

Further investigation told me that Joseph left Coles County for New York where he perhaps married into the Gould family. A daughter Margueritte was born in New York City in 1894. Her obituary does not tell me her mother’s name.

By 1900, Joseph had removed to the west coast where he was working as a restaurant keeper in Portland and living in a boarding house. He had no wife or daughter with him, and the census listed him as a single man. Sometime later he returned to Coles County where he married Mamie C. Emerson in 1905.

Both his obituary and that of his daughter say the family (presumably Joseph, Mamie, and Margueritte) lived in San Francisco after the marriage. Margueritte’s article goes on to say the family left there after the 1906 quake to settle in Oregon.

The Joseph Reed family probably resided in San Francisco during the historic earthquake. I do not know how they were affected by it, but perhaps its aftermath was the reason they left the area and resettled in Oregon.

Did the Reeds in Illinois know of Joseph Van Reed’s time in San Francisco? The county history mentioned only that he went to Eugene, OR. By the 1980’s the Reed family members who remained in Illinois did not know even that much about their cousin Joseph.

My quest to learn the fate of Joseph V. Reed has given me an outline of his life and uncovered an interesting connection to a famous natural disaster.

Did Robertson Reed and Margaret Potts Have Sons?

Over thirty-five years ago, a distant cousin wrote a genealogy of my Reed family. The Reeds of Ashmore by Michael Hayden traced the descendants of Thomas Reed (1783-1853), an original settler in Coles County, Illinois in 1829.

I descend from Thomas’ middle son Caleb, but he had two other sons as well, Robertson and William.

Robertson Mitchell Reed (1808-1871) was married twice. The Reeds of Ashmore includes extensive information on the family from his first marriage to Nancy M. McAlister but not so much on that of his second wife Margaret Ann Potts. The family genealogists at the time had difficulty learning whether there were 2, 3 or even 4 children. They had no idea of what became of them.

This week I decided to revisit this question. I began by searching for Robertson’s sons from the second marriage, reportedly James W. Reed (b. 1857) and Joseph M. or Joseph M. V. Reed (b. abt. 1860). These names came from census records and other county histories.

I needed to look at sources that have come available since then. I turned to a different county history, the Find A Grave site, Ancestry.com, and Newspapers.com.

A clue in the History of Coles County, Illinois (1876-1976) seems to have been overlooked by previous researchers. It reported two sons, James W., born 1857, and Joseph V. who married a Gould and went to Eugene, OR. This was only a starting point because other family information in this source is unreliable and needs independent verification.

I proceeded to uncover the following records:

  1. I located a grave for Joseph Van Reed (1857-1936) in Eugene, Oregon. The site linked to his wife Mamie Reed (1871-1907), buried in the same cemetery.
  2. Ancestry had an Oregon death certificate for this Joseph, and it states that he was born in Illinois. He was predeceased by his wife Mamie. The informant was Mrs. Clayton R. Jones.
  3. Newspapers.com showed an obituary for Joseph V. Reed. It did not include information on his family other than a surviving daughter, Mrs. Clayton R. Jones of Portland.
  4. Ancestry also had a 1905 marriage record for Joseph V. Reed and Mamie Emerson. They were married in Coles County, Illinois. The record states that Joseph V. Reed was the son of Robertson Reed and Margaret Potts.

These sources make it clear that Robertson and Margaret had a son, Joseph Van Reed, born in 1857 who married Mamie Emerson in Coles County in 1905. The couple then relocated to Eugene, OR where they remained for the rest of their lives.

So far I have found no record of another son named James W. Reed.

The earlier Reed researchers had thought Robertson Reed had two sons, James (1857) and Joseph (1860). Now I know that Joseph was the boy born in 1857, the purported birth year of James. No census record lists a James in the Robertson Reed household.

I believe Robertson Reed had just one son with Margaret Potts. He was Joseph Van Reed who may have been married more than once. His surviving daughter was too old to be the daughter of Mamie Emerson. After Joseph’s marriage to Mamie, the family went to Oregon to seek their fortune in gold. When she died a short time later, Joseph and his daughter Margueritte lived out their lives in that state.