Genealogy Jottings

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.

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.

Some DAR chapters run book clubs, and mine has one. This month we read a new biography, The Revolutionary, Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff. During our discussion, one member of the club reported that she is an Adams descendant.

With Massachusetts ancestors myself, I wondered if I, too, might have a connection to this illustrious family. I turned to the Connection Finder tool on the WikiTree website to find out.

I had set up a family tree on this site a few years ago when I began corresponding with some relatives in Finland. They used this site to post our Finnish family tree. I have added other lines since then. Doing so gave me the clue I needed to identify my Mayflower ancestors.

When I ran the WikiTree search for a connection to Samuel Adams, I found no match. I am not related to him.

Next, I queried for a connection to Samuel’s cousins, President John Adams and his son President John Quincy Adams. There I did find a connection, not through the Adams family but through the family of Abigail Adams, the wife and mother of the Presidents.

She was born Abigail Smith. WikiTree located our common English ancestor several generations before Abigail. Our kinship is quite distant, but WikiTree does claim one. It also found a relationship by marriage in a later generation. Whether these connections are valid or not depends on the accuracy of the genealogical work done by the people who posted the family trees.

I hope I am related to this famous First Lady. She seems a worthy family connection to have.

Online genealogy sites can provide valuable genealogical information. People can post their family trees and link their family members to one another on these sites. We can then use this information to help extend our own family lines.

Yet one must be cautious when reviewing this type of information. These pages are secondary sources at best, and facts must be verified.

This week I found Reed family information that I believe is incorrect posted on two such sites:

1. Family Search. This site has a crowd sourced family tree. There I found my ancestor’s second wife, but she was reportedly married to his son, not him. Caleb Reed (1756-abt 1832) married Elizabeth Van Dyke in Shelby County, Kentucky in 1816. Caleb had a namesake son, Caleb C. Reed (d. 1829), who lived in the same county. The online tree at Family Search claims the son, not the father, married Elizabeth Van Dyke. A close review of Shelby County records reveals that Caleb C. Reed had married a different woman, Prudence Kirkham, in 1812, several years before the Van Dyke marriage. In 1829, Caleb C. Reed’s widow Prudence Reed offered his will for probate and became guardian of his children. Caleb C. Reed did not marry Elizabeth Van Dyke while married to Prudence. Elizabeth was his stepmother after her marriage to his father.
2. Find A Grave. Sometime after Caleb C. Reed’s death, Prudence relocated her family to Sullivan County, Indiana. She is buried in the Little Flock Cemetery there. Her Find A Grave memorial is linked to that of a purported husband, Caleb S. Reed who was buried nearby in 1866. We know from the Shelby County, KY records that her husband Caleb C. Reed died much earlier, in 1829. Contrary to the information posted on Find A Grave, Caleb S. Reed was not her husband and not the father of her children. The confusion here is understandable because Caleb was a common name in our family.

Whenever I come across mistakes such as these, I sigh and wonder how much effort I should make to correct the information. I do not like to see errors perpetuated, but posting better information takes time away from my own research.

I did send a message to Find A Grave asking them to edit the connection between Prudence Reed and Caleb S. Reed. I may take the time to correct the Family Search online tree because the senior Caleb Reed was my ancestor.

Prudence Kirkham and the Reeds lived long enough ago that they had many descendants. For their sake, the record should be correct.

The organizer of our upcoming annual Colorado Genealogical Society seminar called me earlier this month with a request. Would I stop by the hotel on my way to the seminar and pick up our speaker, Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist?

Of course I am more than glad to do this. I have long admired Judy. I keep up with her blog. The opportunity to meet her and talk about genealogy is something I do not want to miss.

Years of following her blog have given me a lot of background information about her. She has roots in Madison County, Kentucky, and I do, too. She is half German, like my husband/tech advisor. We can find common interestes to talk about.

In past years our Society has awarded lunch with the speaker as a seminar door prize. I have never won, and I do not know if that will happen this year.

In any case, I think my chance to transport the well-known Legal Genealogist beats that. I will not have to share her with a group at lunch. We will have time for a memorable (for me!) conversation.

As the kids say, I am so stoked.

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.

This week holds a smorgasbord of offerings for furthering one’s genealogical education:

1. The Legacy Family Tree 24-hour genealogy marathon runs today and tomorrow. This free event includes a different class every hour beginning at 3:00 p.m. MDT (https://familytreewebinars.com/24-marathon/). I have registered for the final session, Elusive Ancestors by noted genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills.
2. On Saturday the Colorado Chapter of Palatines to America will host part 2 of its spring seminar. This Zoom session features Mark Rabideau speaking on The Effects of Shifting Boundaries (Switzerland, France, Germany) on Lives, Migrations, and Cultures.
3. DAR Museum Tuesday Talk. I participated virtually this week’s in the April program on Revolutionary Appearances: How Portraits of Women Evolved Around the Revolution. The next of these monthly talks, on May 8, will be Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine. See https://www.dar.org/national-society/events.

All these classes meant several hours of sitting in front of a computer for me. I find it worth it because I always learn something I can use in my own research. I skipped RootsTech with its rich offerings this year, so now I am catching up on my continuing training.

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.

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.

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.