Richard Cumming Stockton Reed

As printed in 1905

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 Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio (1905). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.