The Reed Families of Butler County, Ohio

JAMES G. REED.

On another page of this work will be found a sketch of the life of Robert C. Reed, brother of our subject, and in the connection is incorporated much interesting data concerning the prominent and honored family of which the two brothers are representatives. The Reed family was one of the first to settle in Butler county, the grandparents of the subject having located here long before the admission of Ohio to the Union, while the fact that the father of James G. was the first male white child born in the county bears all of significance as showing how early must have been the period when the family name became identified with the annals of this division of the Buckeye state. To the article mentioned we would refer the reader for further genealogical data, which it is unnecessary to recapitulate in the present connection. The lineage is of Scotch-Irish extraction, and the paternal grandparents of our subject immigrated from the north of Ireland to America and were among the first to establish a home in the sylvan wilds of Butler county, as has already been noted.

James G. Reed, the immediate subject of this review, has passed his entire life in Butler county, and is one of the prominent, representative and highly esteemed farmers of Lemon township. He was born on the old homestead farm, in this township, the date of his nativity having been April 30, i85 7* while it may be said that he was the second in order of birth of the two children of Thomas C. and Rachel (Gordon) Reed, the former of whom was born in the same township, in 1797, while the latter was born in New Jersey in 1824, being a daughter of James and Mary (Slack) Gordon, who were likewise pioneers of Butler county. The father was summoned into eternal rest in 1874. and the mother lived to attain the age of seventy-two years, her death occurring in 1896.

The subject of this sketch was reared on the old home farm and has never lapsed in his allegiance to the great basic art of agriculture. which he has found altogether worthy of his best efforts and through the medium of which he has attained distinctive prosperity and temporal success. He received his educational training in the public schools of his native county, having completed a course in the high school at Amanda, where he was graduated as a member of the class of 1874. He owns a quarter section of most arable land, and to the improvement and cultivation of this place he has given his undivided attention since 1888, when it came into his possession. His farm is well improved and is devoted to diversified agriculture, while he also gives considerable attention to the raising of live stock. In politics he is a stalwart adherent of the Republican party, with which he has been affiliated from the time of attaining his legal majority, and he and his entire family are members of the United Presbyterian church. Mr. Reed is a man of progressive ideas and liberal views and takes a consistent interest in the questions and issues of the hour and in public affairs of a local nature, though he has never sought official preferment. He has been a warm friend of the cause of education and has been influential in the securing of the best possible advantages in the line for his township, being at the present time a member of the school board of his district.

On the 20th of November, 1879. was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Reed to Miss Geraldine S. Conover, who was born in St. Luke’s Place, New York city, on the 3d of November. 1856, being a daughter of Samuel C. and Mary Conover, both of whom died when she was a mere child, and she was reared in the home of her uncle, John L. Schenck. in Butler county. Her father was for a number of years superintendent of the Eaton & Richmond division of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad. Mr. Roberts was an elder in the United Presbyterian church for the long period of forty years, was a man of fine mental gifts and well-fortified convictions and was an able and effective public speaker. Mrs. Reed received her educational discipline in the public schools of Hamilton, and there attended Professor Starr’s high school for three years, while she also attained marked proficiency in music. She was a woman of noble character and gentle and gracious presence, endearing herself to all who came within the sphere of her influence, while her beautiful attributes of character phone most resplendent in the sacred precincts of her own home, where her devotion to husband and children was unmeasured and unselfish in the extreme. She was summoned into the life eternal on the 20th of April, 1890, and in her death came the great loss and bereavement of the subject’s life. She was survived by her six children, the youngest being at the time but six months old. Mr. Reed managed by great care and solicitude to keep his motherless children together in the home and has given them the best of educational advantages available, while five of the number still remain with their father on the old homestead. Verna is now the wife of Charles I. Wykoff. an employe of the Big Four Railroad; and the names of the other children arc as follows: Robert R., Harold T., Gordon J., Rachel M. and Wallace W.

As printed in the source¹. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.

R. C. S. REED, M. D.

Among the highly respected and well-known citizens of Butler county, Ohio, is he whose name appears above. He is the son of Gilbert Maulsberry Reed (or Read), descended from a family by the name of Read that settled in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century, and Catharine Cumming Reed, nee Stockton, daughter of John Noble Cumming Stockton, born at Princeton, New Jersey, in 1774, and Jane Van Schaick Stockton, both dying in 1839 near Pisgah, Ohio. The parents of the subject of this sketch came to Franklin, Warren county, Ohio, about 1816, where they first met and Avere married in 1820, but in 1825 they came to Union township. Butler county, and settled near Rialto paper mills, on lands belonging to the Stockton estate but now owned by Mrs. Ayres Bramble. In 1833 they removed to Clay township, Montgomery county, Ohio, where the father, at the age of sixty-five, died in 1860, and twenty years later the mother died at the age of eighty-four years, at Carmi, White county, Illinois. Of their issue, John Stockton Reed, born December 10, 1821, died in Jersey county, Illinois, in 1899: William Tenent Reed, born August t2, 1823, died in infancy; Richard Cumming Stockton Reed, born February 2, 1825, lives at Stockton, Ohio; Garret Readin Reed, born March 7, 1827, died at Los Angeles, California. September t8, 1904; Jane Elizabeth Reed, born May 25, 1829, died in infancy and was buried at Pisgah, where her grandparents (the Stocktons) were interred ten years later; Harriet Ann Reed, born September 30, 1831, died in 1858 and was buried at Euphemia, where her father was laid by her side two years afterward; Lucius Nelson Reed, born May 28, 1834, many years a contractor and builder at Kendallville, Indiana, lives at Fulton, Illinois.

Dr. Reed attended common schools in Butler and Montgomery counties and continued his preliminary education at a private academy and under private instructors.

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1852, after completing a course of lectures, tures to medical students in the college, and a review of all his medical studies, in through the Cincinnati Medical News, of Starling Medical College, at Columbus, which he was associate editor from 1872 to Ohio, he commenced the practice of medi- 1880, he has freely imparted whatever he being at Wolf Lake, Noble county. Indiana, lieved would benefit the sick and protect the In 1860, at the end of a course of lectures well; whatever would elevate the medical in the Cincinnati College of Medicine and profession and add to its ability to drive

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6i8 the fruit is abundant — the trained nurse is everywhere.”

In about 1882 Dr. Reed secured the introduction into the general assembly of Ohio of a bill for a state board of health, of which bill he was the author. It was the first, as he believed, presented in the state, making ample provision for the protection of society from the charlatan doctor and the unscrupulous vender of food products — and advocated its passage in the Cincinnati Sanitary News, of which he was owner and associate editor from 1882 to 1884. The bill did not become a law. It died with that session of the assembly, but its influence lived.

In politics the Doctor is a Democrat in the strict sense. He was with the Republican party at its organization and he has remained with it ever since. In religion he is a Christian. In 1844 he joined the Cumberland Presbyterian church, but in after years drifted away and now he is not a member of any church organization.

Dr. Reed married, first, in 1852, Miss Nancy, eldest daughter of Hon. John Clark and Elizabeth Clark, nee McClelland, of Milford township, Butler county. Ohio, who died, at the age of twenty-seven years, in 1856, leaving two sons. Dr. John Gilbert Reed, a successful doctor located at Elmwood Place. Ohio, and Dr. Charles A. L. Reed, of Cincinnati, author, teacher, surgeon, ex-president of the American Medical Association, etc. Mrs. Reed had an amiable personality. Her friends were everyone who knew her and every friend loved her for her helpful and generous kindness and unswerving devotion to convictions of duty. Before her marriage, not unlike her associates, she had given no thought to the next generation and when confronted with the conditions of maternity lamented her insufficient knowledge. “I can not believe in passive motherhood,” she said. “Tell me what I must do.” She became an attentive student of biologic subjects, especially that relating to the transmission of ancestral life to the next generation. She learned to believe one generation can make the next better or worse than itself. That the vitalized parent cell is made up of germs from which development and growth must proceed and apply, alike, to physical, moral, intellectual and special sense conditions. They belong to the mother who must divide and increase their number to meet constructive requirements, but she can make them many or few, strong or weak, good or bad. She felt that the end of the breathless period marks the end of the mother’s opportunity to endow and after the first breath has shut off the material blood current it would be as impossible to add germs to strengthen moral or intellectual power as it would be to grow a fourth finger on a hand born with but three. Education can furnish nothing. It only develops what is. The highest grade of success comes to the mother who. early, organized a community of ideals and dwells with them, representing the highest conception of perfection of mental power and moral excellence, and not only well with her ideals but wrestle with them for the blessing, as did Jacob with the man of God. She believed maternity is a business requiring the whole head and heart and is governed by business principles the same as other branches, where the most faithful ate the most successful.

Dr. Reed married, second, in 1858, Mrs. Susan McClelland, widow of Carev McClel1 land and daughter of John and Elizabeth

Waterhouse, of Glendale, Ohio, who died in 1900, at the age of sixty-eight years, leaving five children, namely: Robert Warwick McClelland, of Dayton, Ohio, and Mary E. Seward, nee McClelland, wife of I. Howell Seward, a prosperous farmer near Hamilton, Ohio, children by her first husband, and Horace Greeley Reed, of Hamilton, Ohio, Kate Reed Field, wife of Major D. W. Field, of Los Angeles, California, and Dr. William Stockton Reed, a popular and successful doctor located at Stockton. Mrs. Reed was of a loving and quiet disposition and for forty-two years a model wife and mother.

Dr. Reed went to California in 1894, but returned to the old homestead in Stockton in 1901, where he now (1904) resides, quietly waiting for the summons to go through the valley of the shadows, lift the dark curtain and enter the great beyond where he hopes to find light, life and immortality.

As printed in the source¹. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.

WILLIAM S. REED, M. D., is one of the promising young physicians of Butler County, and has acquired a good practice, though few years have elapsed since his graduation and subsequent settlement for carrying on his vocation. His residence is not far from the village of Stockton, and he enjoys the honor of being President of the Board of Education of that place. In order to keep thoroughly abreast with the times in all discoveries and new methods advocated by the medical fraternity, Dr. Reed is identified with the Butler County Medical Association, and steadfastly pursues his studies and the perusal of journals devoted to the cause.

From his early years Dr. Reed has received good training in his chosen field, for he is a son of Dr. Richard C. S. Reed, who for about thirty-eight years resided in this township, and practiced medicine for nearly that length of time. In his early life he followed the profession of teaching, and then took up medical studies, graduating from the Cincinnati College of Medicine and Surgery about 1860. Nearly his entire life has been passed in this state. For some years he was a Notary Public, and also served as a member of the Board of Education. His father, a native of Pennsylvania, lived to be eighty-six years of age, while his wife reached the extreme old age of ninety-three years. They were the parents of four sons. The wife of Dr. Richard Reed bore the maiden name of Susan Waterhouse. Her father, whose birth occurred in New Jersey, was one of the early settlers in Ohio, and for a number of years lived on the line between Hamilton and Butler Counties. He was a carpenter by trade and followed that occupation with good success. His death occurred when he was in old age.

Dr. William S. Reed is one of three children, the others being Horace G., and Kate, Mrs. Frank Elliott. The birth of the Doctor occurred at Elliston, Ohio, now called Crest View, November 30, 1867. His boyhood was passed in this county, and since he was a year old he has been a resident of Fairfield Township. His elementary education was received in the district schools, and by observation and private reading he greatly supplemented the knowledge thus obtained. As he had a decided taste for the medical profession he concluded to adopt that calling. Going to Cincinnati, he entered the College of Medicine and Surgery in 1889 and took the required course of three years. In 1891 he was graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and returning to the home neighborhood soon began practice.

September 18, 1887, Dr. Reed was united in marriage with Miss Louie Field, and to them have been born a son and daughter: Hazel and Reginald G. Mrs. Reed is a daughter of A. M. and Minerva

(Cliappellear) Field, and is a lady of good education and attainments. The Doctor owns his pleasant home, and is succeeding admirably in building up a good family practice in this vicinity.

Fraternally Dr. Reed is identified with the Knights of Pythias as a member of the lodge at Port Union. He is an advocate of protection for American workmen and industries, and deposits his ballot for the candidates of the Republican party.

As printed in the source². Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.