How Accurate is That Biography, Anyhow?

In the 1800s and the early to mid 1900s, biographical compilations were published across the United States; there were publishers at the time who specialized in such books.  Some were serious works of biography.  Many were less rigorously assembled, with the entries being written by the subjects themselves, as these books were intended to “pump up” the town in a wave of “boosterism.”  Some of these subjects seem not to have been able to resist the temptation to pad the resume, as we say today.  So, when you find an ancestor listed in one of these compilations, can you put full faith and credit in what is said in the entry?  What pitfalls may await the unwary family historian in such an entry?

             Let’s take a case study.  My grand-uncle Don Francis Reed (1887-1930) has an entry in a compilation titled A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, written and compiled by William E. Connelley (Chicago, Lewis, 1918, five volumes).  I found this particular entry while searching the World Wide Web, and was surprised to find Uncle Don’s information.  At that point, I didn’t have much on the Reed family, my mother’s people, and I was happy to find the information.  I have to say I became a little less happy once I started accumulating other documentation and discovered that the information in Uncle Don’s entry was less than 100% reliable and that there is a source of confusion lurking in the information..

             I will reproduce here a portion of the entry, as it is, then I will discuss the errors and confusion that exist in the text.  Points in the text where these errors occur are marked with a consecutive number in square brackets; each error is discussed at the end of the quoted portion of text, by number.  I suggest reading the text without pausing, first, as the text will give the reader a flavor of the type of biography that appears in these compilations.

             “Don Francis Reed has been identified with Harper, Kansas, successively as a blacksmith, farmer, and lawyer.  Admitted to the bar a little more than two years ago he has won his spurs in his first legal contest and is now well established with a general clientage [sic] drawn from all over Harper County.

             “Mr. Reed was born at Logansport, Indiana, January 10, 1887, and is a member of a family that has three living generations.  He is of Scotch ancestry.  His great-grandfather, Herriman Reed [1], was born in Scotland, came to this country in early times, settling in Philadelphia, and died there.  By trade he was a cooper.

             “The grandfather of the Harper lawyer is Charles Reed, who was born in Jay County, Indiana [2], in 1846 [3], and has spent all his life in that section of Eastern Indiana as a farmer.  He has been identified with the republican party for many years, and saw 3 ½ years of active service with an Indiana regiment of infantry in the Civil war [4].  He was at the second battle of Bull Run [5], where he was shot through the arm [6], and later participated in the Atlanta campaign [7] and was at the battle of Kenesaw Mountain [8] and other engagements.  He married Miss Wright, who was born in Pennsylvania [9] and died in Jay County, Indiana.  Ten of their children are still living, namely:  Sarah, wife of S. C. Milton, a farmer in Jay County, Indiana; F. H. Reed; James J. [10], an oil well driller near Portland, Oregon; William M. [11], who is also in the oil well business in Oregon; Solon M. [12], a merchant at Portland, Indiana; Sallie, wife of Ernest J. Louden, who is agent for the Salt Lake Railroad Company at San Pedro, California; Nellie, wife of Waldo Twiggs, an employee of the Warner Gear Company of Muncie, Indiana; Carrie, unmarried and living at Portland, Indiana; John, agent for the Lake Erie and Western Railway at Anson, Ohio; and Leslie, an oil well driller near Portland, Oregon. [13]

             “F. H. Reed, father of Don Francis, was born in Jay County, Indiana, November 19, 1861 [14], and is still living at Logansport in that state.  He has spent practically all his life in Logansport and is a veteran of the Pennsylvania Railway service, still having a run as passenger conductor out of Logansport, which is one of the division points on that road.  He is a republican, very active in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and one of the church trustees.  He married Florence McKee, who was born in White County, [15] Indiana, November 17, 1861 [16].  They are the parents of a family of eleven children:  Perry W., a resident of Chicago and connected with the Interstate Commerce Commission [17]; Don Francis;  Benjamin Franklin, a passenger conductor [18] with the Wabash Railway Company, living at Detroit, Michigan; Charles C., a lieutenant in the Aviation Corps of the United States Army; Merritt W., a farmer in Cass County, Indiana; Edmund McKee, cashier of the Wabash Railway Company at Detriot, Michigan; William E., a student in the Detroit College of Medicine; Lawrence L., now serving with the United States Cavalry stationed at Louisville, Kentucky; Florence G., living with her parents; Paul P. and John, both students in the high school at Logansport.”

             Now to discuss the errors and confusions in the text.

 [1].  This is one of those traps for the unwary.  Here the term “great-grandfather” is being used loosely.  Uncle Don’s great-grandfather on the Reed side was Harvey Reed, not Herriman (or Harriman; remember, we need to be aware of alternative spellings in our research), and he was born probably in Gallia County, Ohio, according to information developed by a distant cousin, Shirley Reed.  The term “great-grandfather” here may simply mean a distant ancestor, not his actual great-grandfather as we define the term.  There may very well be a Herriman Reed, immigrant from Scotland, back in the ancestry.  So far, searches in such sources as the 1790 census for Philadelphia, ship passenger lists, and other references have turned up no Herriman (or Harriman) Reed.

 [2]  According to Charles Reed’s invalid pension claim, obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration1, Charles Reed was born in Gallia County, Ohio.  His family moved to Jay County, Indiana when he was a youngster.  This is probably one of those instances where the biography’s subject is not certain of his information, but goes ahead anyway because he’s close enough for government work, as we say.  In fact, I doubt that many mistakes such as these which appear in these biographies are intentional, and certainly they’re not malicious, in the main.  They’re simply the result of slips of memory.

 [3]  Charles Reed’s birth year, according to his invalid pension file, was 1840, not 1846.

[4]  Charles Reed’s active service in the Civil War was less than a year.  He enlisted on 13 October 1864 and was mustered out 11 July 1865 (however, he had been invalided home, actually, on 30 June 1865).  His service consisted mainly in being ill with “camp diarrhoea” (probably amoebic dysentery) and “break-bone fever” (the old name for dengue fever).

 [5]  Since 2nd Bull Run (or 2nd Manassas) was fought in 1862 and Charles Reed enlisted on 13 October 1864, this is unlikely, to say the least.

 [6]  Charles Reed’s invalid pension file, which includes a number of reports of medical examinations complete with illustrated body diagram, makes no mention whatsoever of any wounds received in service.  His disability claim was based entirely on bacterial and viral diseases and their complications.

 [7]  According to Charles Reed’s pension file, which includes statements by himself as to his service, as well as reports of service from the War Department, his regiment was nowhere near Atlanta.  The regiment’s service was entirely in Tennessee and North Carolina.  A report on the movements of the regiment, the 140th Indiana Infantry, is found at the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System website, maintained by the National Park Service, located at web address http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/regiments,htm  on which none of these campaigns attributed to Charles Reed by his grandson are mentioned.  Here the case might either be faulty recall, complete ignorance of the facts coupled with a desire to pump up the resume, or remembering tales grandpa spun out of whole cloth because he didn’t care to admit that he spent most of the Civil War in hospital.

 [8]  Again, this campaign is not mentioned in Charles Reed’s pension file nor on the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System as having been engaged by the 140th Indiana Infantry.

 [9]  According to research so far, it appears that “Miss Wright,” (Clarissa Haney Wright) was born in Xenia, Green County, Ohio.

 [10]  Here, Uncle Don has misremembered his uncle’s name.  The middle initial for James is M., not J., for his name was James Marcellus Reed.  Information for these name corrections comes from Charles Reed’s pension file and from a typescript in the family begun by Charles’s son John (John Robinson Reed)2 and continued by another family member after John’s death.

 [11]  This is simply another misremembered name.  Middle initial should be I.; his name was William Irvin Reed.

 [12]  Another misremembered name.  Middle initial should be E.; his name was Solon Ernest Reed.

 [13]  Uncle Don has forgotten that there were twelve living children of Charles Reed at the time he made his entry for this biography.  Mary Catherine didn’t die until 1932, and Lawrence Elbert died in 1942.3

 [14]  F. H. (Francis Harvey, or “Frank”) Reed’s birthdate is November 17, 1862, according to a family genealogy prepared by the children of Frank Reed and Florence McKee Reed on their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1934.4

 [15]  There is a point of confusion here, possibly.  On his application for a marriage license in 1913, Florence Reed’s son Benjamin Franklin Reed gives her birthplace as Warsaw, Indiana,5 which is in Wabash County, not White County.  Florence and Frank Reed were married in White County, and that may be the source for confusion.  Her birthplace will need to be investigated.

 [16]  Florence’s birth date is November 19, 1862.6

 [17]  According to the birth certificate of Perry’s daughter Mary Elizabeth, he was a “traffic manager” (railroad) in 1910.  The answer is provided by my uncle Bob, Perry Reed’s son, in an article in Pensacola History Illustrated7:  “[Perry Reed] was a mathematical whiz, a freight rate expert with a license to practice before the Interstate Commerce Commission.”  So the connection was simply this license, which does not make him an employee of the ICC.  It simply means he could represent his employer, the railroad, in matters brought before the ICC.  By the letters that he wrote to his wife Mary LeSourd between 1907 and 1914 on letter head of various railroads, he worked for the railroads, not for the ICC.  By 1920 he was living in Pensacola and working as the general freight agent for the Gulf, Florida, and Alabama Railway.8

 [18]  According to his obituary in the Logansport, Indiana, Pharos-Reporter, Benjamin Franklin Reed's occupation was as a switchman, not a conductor.9 ( He died in a railway accident 22 October 1917; this book apparently went to press before a correction could be entered noting his death.) 

             It pays to be wary when reading these biographies of our ancestors in compilations such as these.  One probably can rely on the information concerning activities in the geographical area covered by the compilation.  A subject would not be able to get away with padding the resume where there are many fellow citizens who would be likely to say, “That isn’t exactly right, now, is it?” to the subject’s face once the book came out.  But activities which took place away from that region, or information about ancestors, is more suspect, as we see here in this case study.  These biographies can be a useful springboard for further research, but we must beware of the traps they may contain.

 1  Charles Reed, Civil War Pension Application File SO 816,345; SC 697,707; Records of the Veterans Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

2  John Robinson Reed, and others, “Births and Deaths in the Reed Family to April 1, 1913,” typescript, copy in possession of the author. Added to the list are dates after 1913; those added after 1918, the year John Robinson Reed died, were added by another family member, identity unknown.

3  Ibid.

4  “Reed Family Genealogy,” typescript prepared by Rosanna Jane Breese, granddaughter of Francis Harvey Reed.  In possession of the author.

5  Frank (Benjamin Franklin) Reed and Ruth Nave, marriage applications, license, and certificate, Clerk of Circuit Court, St. Joseph County, South Bend, Indiana, Marriage Book 26, page 88.

6  “Reed Family Genealogy.”

 7  Robert Reed, “Little Man,” Pensacola History Illustrated (Pensacola Historical Society, vol.1 no. 4, Winter 1985) pp. 27-32

8  Letters of Perry Wilmer Reed and Mary LeSourd, 1907-1920.  In possession of the author.

9  “Engine Kills a Switchman,” Logansport, Indiana, Pharos-Reporter, October 22, 1917 (n.p.)

GeniAus's Accentuate the Positive for 2025

 I like Jill Ball's (GeniAus) yearly Accentuate the Positive meme.  This year, it revolves around words.  The instructions:  "For the 2025 challenge, I have decided to move away from prompts that relate to particular situations and resources to a list focusing on our reactions to particular verbs as we reflect on our family history journey."  We are free to eliminate those words that don't relate to us, if any.  I have bolded the words so they stand out. The list:

Remember to Accentuate the Positive

2025 Prompts

1.  I treasured all the wonderful documents I found scanned online -- land records, more censuses, BMD documents, and more.

2. I shared lots of information with other members of WikiTree in building the best biographies we can produce with the best sources to back it all up. 

3. I travelled virtually.  I am no spring chicken, and I can't fly anymore due to my tendency these days to form blood clots in my legs.  I've already experienced having the clots travel to my lungs, and almost didn't survive it.  I really would rather not have a repeat performance of that. 

4. I learnt a whale of a lot about using WikiTree.  There is a lot to learn there, a rather steep learning curve.  Of course, these days, there's no printed manual, so I'm creating my own by printing out the various portions of instructions on this or that aspect of WikiTree, and putting it all in a binder.  It is so much easier for me to have instructions printed out and in my hand than it is to switch from an input screen where I'm trying to post data, to another screen where the instructions for doing this particular action are located, and then switching back again.  By the time I switch back to the input screen, I've totally forgotten what I've just read! 

5. I changed my mind about a few things when I found documentation that proved my assumptions or beliefs about an ancestor wrong.  That's why WikiTree demands and insists that we provide citations to reliable sources! 

6. I received wonderful support from the WikiTree Profile Improvement Project (PIP), which provides guidance to new WikiTree participants.  It's a self-paced way, with expert help, of learning how to use WikiTree most effectively. 

7. I conquered many of the details of WikiTree through the PIP.  It has certainly made learning all this complicated stuff not easy, but less stressful.

8. I found that I'm related to all sorts of well-known people, and have been able to document these relationships:  the actor Leslie Nielsen, one of my favorites; Thomas Jefferson (I already knew I'm related to John Adams); Maybelle Addington Carter and Alvin Pleasant Dulaney (A. P.) Carter of the Carter Family Singers. 

9. I was proud to discover, through the relationship to the Carters, above, that I am also related to a very dear friend of mine.  That was the best discovery of all, and I'm tickled pink!  When I told this friend that we are 22nd cousins, once removed, she said, "I guess that's why we have hit it off so well from the start!"  I guess so.

10.I  read Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone: The Carter Family and their Legacy in American Music, by Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg.  I was about halfway into this collective biography of the Carter family that I found out I am distantly related to them.  That made the reading of the book that much more intriguing to me.Thank you, Jill, for a great meme! 

FamilySearch's Simple Search: Simply Amazing

Earlier today, I read in Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings about FamilySearch's new Simple Search.  He demonstrated it and it looked intriguing.  

I'm now in about my third hour of reading, downloading, sourcing, and getting all sorts of excited about the ton of records this simple search gave me with plain-text brief inquiries.  Asking simply for Oscar Merry Packard, my great-grandfather, in Chautauqua County, New York, gave me his baptism record and other church records, and the same on his sister, some cousins, his parents, aunts and uncles.  Then I asked for information on Joseph Hoyt III in the same location, and found my 3rd great-grandfather and his sons and a daughter, and this led to wills, marriage records, more church records, land records and more.  I found out that only three of the children of Joseph Hoyt IV lived long enough to be remembered in his will.   I have a lot of transcribing and analysis to do.

There is at least three more hours of work for me to do just examining and recording and sourcing more records.  I have at least thirty tabs at the top of Firefox's search bar, just waiting for me to look at them and determine where they fit in my family lines -- or if they do at all.  I've already discarded several that do not relate to my line at all.  And now I have a ton of new information to make that winnowing process be even more accurate.   

The search really is simple.  There's no form to fill out.  There is simply a space into which you just ask a simple question.  You may make it as vague or specific as you want.  Take a look at Randy's explanation here.  I told Randy in a comment on his blog that this is going to keep me off the streets and out of the pool halls for months!

 

They're Everywhere!

 Who are everywhere?  Cousins!

At the age of 60, in 2007, I decided to go back to college.  I wanted to do some genealogy research into the families of St. Augustine, Florida, which is about 36 miles from my house.  I knew my high school Spanish from all those decades ago would not be sufficient to understand and translate the documents I would encounter.  I ended up with a double post-baccalaureate major in Spanish and history.  And in one of those Spanish classes, there was a fine bear of a young man.  He sat on the opposite side of the classroom from me.  

The discussion was about kinship, in a broad sense, and our professor, Dr. Jorge Febles, used an expression that did not translate well in the literal sense into English.  I got the drift, however, and was about to give the English equivalent that Dr. Febles was asking us for:  The apple don't fall far from the tree, a phrase taught to me by a dear friend from the Appalachians.  Before I could say it, the phrase came from the bear of a young man, whose surname was Bowers.  

After class, I said to him, "You're from the Appalachians, aren't you?" 

"Yes, ma'am, I shore am," he said.

I asked him if he had any kin of a certain surname, and he said he didn't think so.   When I got home, I called my friend from the Appalachians, Amanda, thinking young Bowers might be related to her.  I asked her if she had any Bowers people in her lineage.  She didn't think so.

The next week, I received in the mail a book I had been waiting for -- Teter Nave, East Tennessee Pioneer: His Ancestors and Descendants, by Robert T. Nave and Margaret W. Houghland.  I was eager to look for my Nave kin, my mother's line, and I found a great-great grandfather whose name startled me:  John Teter Bowers Nave.  Maybe it wasn't Amanda young Bowers was related to.  Maybe it was me.

 The next class, I told young Bowers about my great-grandfather John Teter Bowers Nave, and he said, "Oh, yeah, we've got Teters and Naves all over the family!"  

Lately, I had found indications that I was related to the famous Carter family of country music, both to Maybelle Addington Carter, the "Mother Maybelle" of the Carter Family Singers, and to her brother-in-law Alvin Pleasant Dulaney (A. P.) Carter, leader of the troupe, country music songwriter, and "song-catcher" of the Appalachian Mountains.  My friend Amanda has connections to that family, and it made me grin at the idea that we might be cousins.

And indeed we are -- 22nd cousins once removed.

Next year, it will be forty years I've known Amanda.  Never, until the recent revelations, did I suspect we may be kin.

Tread softly, friends.  You never know.  That stranger sitting next to you in the theater might be your cousin.

 

WikiTree: Poking About with a Purpose

 I've had an account at Ancestry.com for years.  I have also had a tree on FamilySearch.  But I recently got curious about WikiTree and decided to poke about in it.

Yeah, that poking about got me hooked.

I find a lot to like about Ancestry.com.  My tree there is MY tree there.  I decide what gets posted to it.  I demand and exercise the use of reliable sources.  I've had a good deal of training in genealogy, a lot of it emphasizing the need for good source citations.  I don't have to worry about someone lacking any training in genealogy putting misinformation on my Ancestry tree.

I love FamilySearch for its documents and records and its research information and instructive articles.  I don't love constantly having to correct misinformation, usually unsourced, again and again and again, concerning my ancestors.  So I will use the immense number and variety of original and derivative sources on FamilySearch.  I will take advantage of their marvelous research guides and their wonderful wiki.  But I'm not wasting my time anymore on that tree.

Enter WikiTree.  It is also a collaborative tree.  However, it is a lot more likely to be accurate.  For one thing, to use WikiTree, one must sign their Honor Pledge, which states that we will back up every fact with a reliable source or sources.  For another, WikiTree is mainly by genealogists for genealogists, people who have had some training in the field and who understand its requirements.  And finally, the idea behind WikiTree is that we all help grow the best, most reliable, and most accurate tree we can make, so people in the future have a highly useful body of information about their ancestors there on the Web. 

I've wondered how I was going to preserve and pass on my family history.  My daughters and grandson don't have the passion, though my grandson does enjoy hearing family stories.  But they have other concerns taking their attention.  I do plan to leave a lot of documents and research to a genealogy society or societies.  WikiTree now also figures into my plan of how to preserve and pass on my family history.

WikiTree also has a great deal of mentoring.  One of these mentorships is their Profile Improvement Project (PIP).  The profile is the individual entry of information (well-sourced, of course) about an ancestor.  A good profile has as much information as one can gather, representing a "reasonably exhaustive" body of research, and analysis of what it all means.  To show you the results my participation in the Profile Improvement Project has rendered, you are invited to see my profile of my granduncle and adoptive grandfather, Perry W. Reed.  WikiTree has a hugely long learning curve, and the PIP helps a lot in getting through it.

Another handy learning tool is their G2G (Genealogist to Genealogist) communication facility.  There, a user can ask questions about genealogy, about the technology of WikiTree, and about WikiTree's policies.  The policies are set by various functions in WikiTree, and those functions are staffed by members of WikiTree.  WikiTree is very FUBU (For Us, By Us). 

Who was the disruptive ancestor in your family?

Somewhere in the blogosphere, I came across a prompt:  Who was your disruptive ancestor?  I forget where I found this, because I . . .  well, read on and I'll explain. 

I'm using the term "disruptive" to indicate the child in your family who might have been the one bouncing off the walls or the one who was often off in his or her own world; the one who struggled with school, with getting projects done; the one with the explosive temper.  Who was that person in your family?

I want to let my descendants know:  I was your "disruptive" ancestor.

I lost my temper; I felt things deeply, whether that was things that made me mad or things that made me happy.  I struggled to get things done.  Often I did get them done, but at a psychic price, because managing a project is difficult for me.  I was impulsive; I would blurt out comments without thinking first.  Often, I embarrassed myself by doing so, and felt shame.  I had memory problems and difficulty with time management.  If an object fell out of my immediate field of vision, it was instantly forgotten.  My room was a mess.  I was criticized and judged, and elders in my family tried to "fix" what they perceived as my flaws, emotional and physical.  Therefore I developed a flawed and negative self-image.  Despite all these challenges, I excelled in academics because that was all I had on which to build my childhood and teenage identity.  I wasn't pretty; I wasn't popular; I wasn't your typical girl.  I was a tomboy; I'd rather have climbed trees than gone to a dance, where I felt terribly awkward.  I was what was called at the time a "late bloomer."  That academic success did not come easy; there was a psychic price.  Accomplishing anything -- doing homework, doing science projects, writing papers, taking tests -- required an expenditure of energy and effort that was three times that required for most other kids to get done.

The 1950s were not a great time to be a nonconformist.  It wasn't a great time to, by my nature, go against the established norms for behavior of a highly patriarchal society.  It wasn't a good time to be an oddball in a traditional family.  It didn't help that, having read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique at 14, I became a feminist in a family that bought into the patriarchy lock, stock, and barrel.

I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  I have only recently found this out.  I'm 78.  I've had this condition all my life.  Learning about ADHD through online forums and support groups (such as  Attention Deficit Disorder Association), I have found that my life finally makes sense!  

I've read that there's considerable evidence that it runs in families.  I think my father, who died when I had just turned 7, was my ADHD parent.  Mom told me that he had "flunked sandbox."  That is to say, he got kicked out of kindergarten.  That would have been somewhere around 1915.  That was another time when being different was not exactly acceptable.  He probably had no choice but to buckle down and behave as he was expected to; certainly he didn't have a choice during his college experience at the United States Naval Academy.  Discipline in those days was often physical.   

Other nuclear family members either have been diagnosed with ADHD or suspect they may have it.

 ADHD has definite physical elements:  Our brains are wired differently from most folks, referred to as neurotypicals.  Those with ADHD, and others whose brains work differently, are termed "neurodivergent."  We do not see the world as most people see it.  We do not relate to the world as most people do.  We have lower levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine.  These chemicals are vital to what are called the executive functions of organization and planning.  This means those of us with ADHD aren't good at project management.  

ADHD is all-pervasive, influencing nearly every aspect of our existence.  October has been ADHD Awareness Month.  Please become aware; and do a little learning to see if perhaps that "disruptive" relative of yours might have ADHD and might be in need of diagnosis and treatment in order to live their best life.

 

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Baseball

 My husband and I, on a whim, watched the greater part of a baseball game today.  It was the Baltimore Orioles at the New York Yankees.  As a lifelong Dodgers fan dating from their time in Brooklyn (yes, I'm that old), I don't like the Yankees, so I had to cheer on the Orioles.  It was a futile endeavor, I fear, as the score when we left the game was 9-0 Yankees.  Sigh.

Yes, I've been fond of baseball since my childhood in the 1950s.  I was a tomboy; the usual girlish pursuits did not attract me.  I collected baseball cards.  I played "flyers & grounders" with a neighbor boy.  I watched baseball games on TV with my grandma, and I was thrilled when my mother kept me out of school one day and took me to the baseball stadium in our home town of Jacksonville, Florida, where we watched the then-Brooklyn Dodgers play an exhibition game.  I almost caught a fouled baseball, but I was carrying soft drinks back to our seats, and didn't want to drop them.  

And just in the early years of this century, the Dodgers played again at our local stadium, and I got Tommy LaSorda's autograph! That was a big thing for me.

My one regret in my affection for baseball has been that my eyes are not aligned due to a childhood operation to correct severe cross-eye.  I have no depth perception within three feet.  I can't hit a baseball worth beans.

 

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Charles Reed's Timeline

 Charles Reed (1840-1920) was my great-great grandfather on my mother's side.  He was born in Gallia County, Ohio, 28 August 1840.[1]  He died 26 January 1920 in Portland, Jay County, Indiana.[2]  In the year in which he was born, "horsepower" meant the ability of a horse to pull the family buggy.  In the year in which he died, "horsepower" was the power rating of the automobiles coming off Henry Ford's production line.  Charles Reed had served in the Civil War, Company F, 140th Indiana Infantry.[3]  When he died, the world had not long before engaged in a terrible war "to end all wars," which, of course, it did not.  

And when he died, importing, manufacturing, or drinking alcoholic beverages was illegal.

In the year in which he was born, Victoria, Queen of England, married Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Germany.  James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder was a nationwide best-seller.  Born in 1840: Emile Zola, Claude Monet, Thomas Nast, Pierre Auguste Renoir, August Rodin, Peter Ilich Tchiakovsky, and Father Damien, the "leper priest" of Hawaii.[4]

 In the year before Charles Reed died in January of 1920, Theodore Roosevelt died.  Woodrow Wilson presided over the first meeting of the League of Nations.  There was racial strife in Chicago, and the American Steel strike began, ending in January of 1920.  The International Labor Conference endorsed the eight-hour workday.  Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio was published, as was Hugh Lofting's first Dr. Doolittle book, H. L. Mencken's The American Language. and Robert H. Goddard's A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, a seminal work at the beginning of the age of rocketry.[5]  

 All of this information, and the citations below, are in an extensive timeline I did in 2003 on Charles Reed.  It spans 88 pages, with endnotes.  I had read an article extolling the virtues of timelines as a way of placing our ancestors in context.  I used Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History, which is arranged in chronological order, and lists events of political, historical, scientific, and social importance.  I also used various censuses, Charles Reed's Civil War pension file, and other references, to create the timeline.

Not only did I enter the events of national and world importance, I also entered the family events, such as births and deaths of the descendants of Charles Reed and of members of collateral families, mainly the spouses and children of his descendants. 

I am a convinced advocate of timelines. 

[1]  John Robinson Reed (son of Charles Reed), et. al., "Births and Deaths in the Reed Family to April 1st, 1913."  List of the birth and death dates of Charles and Clarissa Reed and their children with additional death dates entered by persons unknown, no date.  Copy of typescript, initialed "J.R.R." (presumably John Robinson Reed).

[2] Charles Reed, Civil War Pension Application File, SO 816,345; SC 697,707: Records of the Veteran's Administration, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Bernard Grun, The Timetables of History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).  The book is arranged by year; I have not given page numbers because the arrangement by year makes it easy to find the items cited.

 [5] Ibid.

 

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Pi Day and Beyond

Years ago, our older daughter Marti was the receptionist/secretary of the Math and Statistics Department at the University of North Florida (UNF).  Mathy types celebrate their own holiday -- well, it's a working holiday -- on 14 March of each year.  Pi Day, so named because 3.14 are the first three digits of Pi.

So, of course, on Pi Day, what to the mathy types eat?  Pie.

Marti and I made pies for Pi Day and took them in to the department.  I was a student at UNF at the time.

 And to be true to the concept of Pi, I made my pies in a square pan.  With the formula on top, in crust.

Like this cherry pie I made one year:

Marti and I had great fun making these pies, and everyone in the department enjoyed them.  And we still enjoy remembering them.

Marti, being an employee of the university, had the perk of a free class each term.  Being deaf in one ear, she chose American Sign Language (ASL).  When she and her sister were young, they asked for and received a book on ASL.  Little did we parents suspect that we were giving our daughters access to a language which we didn't "speak."  I'm sure that led to all sorts of shenanigans, but they survived all.  So ASL was not new to Marti.

After taking the classes in ASL, Marti enrolled in a "bridge program" offered by Florida State University, my first alma mater.  This program was designed to bring students who had no background in sciences up to speed to then enroll in doctorate programs in audiology, in an effort to make up a shortfall of audiologists.  No surprise to me, considering how loud young people have been playing their music since the 1960s.  Anyway, she then was accepted at the University of Florida's doctoral program in audiology, and now she is a doctor.  She's not the first doctor in the family -- that occurred back in the late 1800s.  She is, however, the first female doctor in the family.  She works with veterans, individuals with whom she feels right at home, since her father and I are both veterans.  She loves the work.

 Our daughter, the doctor!

 

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Hallowe'en 1982

[Alert:  this post has one mildly naughty word in it.] 

It was the season for trick-or-treating in the neighborhood where we lived when our daughters were in middle school.  This photo was taken 1982 at the home of my older daughter's best friend Kim.  In the photo are Marti, our older daughter; me; and our younger daughter, Elizabeth.

I have to say I'm still impressed that I actually made those uniforms.  If you don't recognize the uniforms, they are my best job of the Starfleet uniforms from Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan.  I don't sew, as a rule.  I am not good at it and it's not really something I enjoy.  But even if I do say so myself, I did a doggone good job with them.

 

Marti is Captain Kirk, though with a much fuller head of hair.  She's reading A Tale of Two Cities, the book Spock gives to Kirk as a birthday present in the movie.  Elizabeth is Lieutenant Saavik, Spock's full-Vulcan protege.  I guess having made the uniforms makes me the Starfleet tailor.

Our family had a lot of fun with Star Trek.  We watched the original series in syndication, and we watched the later series offerings, as well.  We went to all the movies.  We went to conventions and sometimes worked on convention staff.  And we played games based on Star Trek.  It has been a part of the glue that kept this family together all these years.

One game we played was a card game, in which, in our explorations, we got into a combat situation, a part of the game that the rules called The Last-Ditch Battle.  Whoever had the most cards won the game.  I was running the game, with Marti and Elizabeth, by that time, both in high school, playing with me.  We went through all the levels and got to that last end-game part, and I announced it:  "Now it's time for the last-bitch dattle."

I don't think we stopped laughing for ten minutes.   

50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge: Story Time

 Jennifer Jones, whom I follow on Substack, has issued a challenge:  Can we make an entry to our genealogy blogs every day for 50 days?  I'm already over-extended, but that's me.  But I can't resist.

I need a goad to get myself to the keyboard and get some stuff done.  So here we go . . . 

 Story time:

My mother was an intra-family adoption.  Her father, Benjamin Franklin Reed, was killed in a railroad accident when Mom was not quite a year old.  According to her sister, my Aunt Margaret, the Reed family "ganged up" on my widowed grandmother and took her two daughters away from her and had two brothers and their wives adopt them.  Mom's brother, the oldest of the three, was 16, and was left with his mother.

My mother was adopted by her uncle, Perry Wilmer Reed, and his wife, Mary LeSourd.  Perry, after a career in railroads working with the rules, rates, and regulations as a general freight agent, became the head of the Chamber of Commerce in Pensacola, Florida, in the late 1920s.  And here's a story, as told to me by Mary Reed when I was a teenager in the 1960s:

Mary LeSourd Reed, as the wife of the head of the Chamber of Commerce, had to maintain a certain lifestyle and appearance, as a member of the Pensacola upper crust.  And part of that appearance, among "decent" women in the 1920s, was long hair.  Hers was down to below her waist.  All that heavy hair caused Mary to have awful headaches, as it must have done to most, if not all, the high-society ladies of Pensacola.  Well, Mary was not one to put up with that which she need not endure.  Aware of the fashion trends of the "Roaring Twenties," she went to the beauty salon and had her hair "bobbed," as they called it in those days -- she got it cut.  Short.  

She went to Perry's office to get his opinion of her new "do."  She marched into his office and asked him how he liked the new look.  Perry's secretary was standing nearby.  "Well, Mary," Perry said, "It looks all right."

Mary stormed out of Perry's office, leaving him totally befuddled as to what his offense may have been.  His secretary let him know, as Perry probably told Mary later:  "Mr. Reed," she said, as if admonishing a recalcitrant student on the fine points of proper behavior.  "You never tell a woman that she looks 'all right.'"

That's not the end of the story.

The next day, the other elite women of Pensacola went to the beauty salon -- and what a banner day it must have been for that establishment's bottom line!  They all had their hair bobbed.  If Mary Reed wasn't going to put up with those horrible headaches any more, neither were they!

 

True Confessions: Cranberry Wine

 It's 1976 or thereabouts.  I'm a fairly new Yeoman Third Class in the Coast Guard Reserve.  It's a Saturday of my drill weekend.  I come home, tired from a busy day and a long commute.  I open the refrigerator to see what I might cobble together for dinner.  The fridge is pretty bare, and there's an empty bottle on one of the shelves.

"If you're going to drink the last of the wine," I say to my husband, "don't put the empty bottle back in the fridge."  There had been about 1/3 of the bottle left, my husband and I having enjoyed the other 2/3 over the course of a couple weeks.

He denies having had any of the wine, a sparkling cranberry wine made by a friend of my father-in-law, Marshall.  Marshall had gotten a few bottles from his friend, and had given us one.

Just then, our four-year-old daughter Elizabeth comes toddling down the hall from the bedroom she shares with her sister, who is six.  She's happy.  Too happy.  REALLY happy.  We look at each other, then back at our daughter.  That explains the missing 1/3.

She's been into the sparkling cranberry wine, and put the empty bottle back into the fridge.  Keys and I laugh, but I also remind him to keep a better eye on the kids when I'm not home.

When the girls are teenagers, we're swapping family stories, and we tell them about Elizabeth's adventure with the cranberry wine.  We all have a good laugh.

48 years later --

Elizabeth has, about a year before, been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood.  She's achieved remission, and her sister Marti has been her morale officer, coming Saturdays to visit, bring lunch, and play video games or watch silly TV shows with her.  Then Elizabeth is feeling up to short road trips and shopping.  So one day they go to a small town where Marti has heard there's a winery, not too far south of where we live.

When they return, they have a gift for us, that astonishes and amuses us no end . . . 

. . . in repayment of a debt of long standing that Elizabeth owes us . . . 

. . . a bottle of cranberry wine!

 

How Did They Meet?

 I am inspired today by the Genealogy Tip of the Day newsletter sent out by Michael John Neill.  What caught my eye was this:

"Determining how your ancestor met their spouse can be an interesting genealogical endeavor. It may not even be possible to do anything other than conjecture about their meeting. But at the very least, researching them with the intention of discovering how they met may result in new information–even if it has nothing to do with their marriage."

I know how my mother and father met, because my mother told me.

Mom was raised in Pensacola, Florida, and graduated from Pensacola High School in 1935.  My father, raised in Pasadena, California, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland in 1934.

Dad had always been interested in flying, having been a member of the "Aero Club" at Pasadena High School/Junior College, a combined educational institution.  After graduation, Dad served on an aircraft carrier, and, in 1937, was chosen for flight school at Pensacola Naval Air Station.  Ah, fate.

My mother could be very determined.  Once she made up her mind to do something, it was going to be done come Hell or high water.  She and her friends, the social elite of Pensacola, would hang out at the Officers' Club at NAS Pensacola to see who they could meet.  My mother told me that she spotted my father across the proverbial crowded room, and decided, "That's the man I'm going to marry."  Dad's fate was sealed.

She most likely introduced herself to him, rather than wait for someone else to arrange an introduction.  And the rest is history.

They were married 16 July 1937.  These wedding pictures are hand-colored and mounted on tiles of porcelain.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 21 -- Military

This week in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Amy Johnson Crow asks us to post about the military members in our family history.

Here's a roster of military service in my family:

8x-great-grandfather Samuel Packard served in King Philip's War (1675–1678).

My 4x-great grandfather Richards Packard served in the American Revolution (1775-1783). 

My great-great grandfathers Mathew Hale Packard and Charles Reed served in the Civil War, for the Union (1861-65).

My great-great granduncles Thadeus Bullock Packard and William B. Packard served in the Civil War, too, also for the Union.

My husband's great-grandfather, Daniel McLeod Marshall, served in the Civil War, for the Confederacy.

My father, Arden Packard, served in the U.S. Navy in World War II (1939-1945).

My father-in-law, Leonard Marshall Rhodes, served in the temporary U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

My husband's grandfather, Andrew Lewis Rhodes, served in the temporary U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

My brother, Arden "Ned" Packard II, served in the U.S. Marines in the VietNam War (1955-1975).

My husband, Keys Rhodes, and I both served in the U.S. Coast Guard in the Cold War (1945-1991).

 We were surprised to find that my husband's father and grandfather had been in the Coast Guard before he was.  We had thought he was the first in his family to serve in the USCG, but he was actually the third.

I was the first woman in the Packard-Reed family to enter military service. 

We're proud of our service and of our families' military tradition.

 

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Did You Have Fun This Week?

This week, our Saturday Night mission from Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is:

1) Did you have good genealogy fun this past week?  Did you add to your family Tree?  Did you make a great discovery?  Did you try something new?  Did you make family history?

2)  Share your genealogy fun in this past week on your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack or BlueSky post.  Leave a link on this blog post to help us find your post.

First, you need to understand that I am a research nerd.  I like sitting down and poring through books and documents and newspaper archives and all that.  I love poking about in the past, for a variety of reasons.  

My family history relates to Jacksonville, Florida in many ways, reaching back to when my father was stationed there in the U.S. Navy during World War II.  We lived there for a brief while in the very early 1950s, when I was a wee one.  My mother brought me and my siblings back to Jacksonville after my father died in 1954, and I've been in or near Jacksonville ever since, with two years out for when my husband was in the Coast Guard stationed in St. Petersburg, Florida.  Place is also an important part of our family history.  So it's no surprise that, upon joining the Society for One-Place Studies, I picked as my one place the city I consider my home town:  Jacksonville. 

So I have been having fun for the past few weeks writing a series on the history of the consolidation of Jacksonville with Duval County in 1968.  It surprised me and my husband, who was born and raised there, that the history of consolidation in Jacksonville goes back to 1923, when an attempt was made to pull off the consolidation of city and county.  Another try in 1933 also failed.  Success finally came in 1968.

My interest in the subject stems from having been a student at Florida State University at the time, and having been a government major.

So you can see the origin of this rather warped sense of fun that I have.But it's my fun.  If you'd like to join in that fun, you can try my One-Place Study blog at One-Place Study: Jacksonville, Florida.  In addition to the series on consolidation, I've written about the days when Jacksonville was the place to make movies before Hollywood, California, was a gleam in anyone's eye, about shopping in Jacksonville when I was young, and about a sorry chapter in Jacksonville's history, the day known as "Ax Handle Saturday."

16 years? It's been 16 years?

 Today is my blogiversary!  It was 16 May 2009 when I started this blog.  That's 16 years.  Doesn't seem like that long.  

I've had times when I had so many ideas I had a hard time choosing from day to day.  I've had times when either the well of ideas ran dry, or life interfered with my blogging.  But I'm slogging the blogging, forging ahead stubbornly.

I own my stubbornness and come by it honestly -- I'm a direct descendant of Massachusetts Puritans!

Sixteen years.  Wow!

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 20: Wheels

This week in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Amy Johnson Crow asks us to post about wheels in our family history.

In the spring of 1850, my great-great granduncle Major W. Packard set out from Bloomington, Illinois, with a wagon train to the gold fields of California -- to Sutter's Mill.  No, he was not going to pan for gold.  His purpose was simple curiosity, as he wanted to observe and write about the people who were attracted by the possibility of becoming rich by coaxing shiny little flakes out of streams.

He made some sharp observations about the gold-attracted:  "Now it is the nature of such news that the further it travels, the bigger it gets, and the more wonderful.  So it is not strange that when the news of the discovery reached us in the then border states, the size of the sand-like particles really found in that far-off, insignificant mill-race, had increased to very respectable nuggets."

On setting out from St. Joseph, Missouri, Wellman (as he's known in the family) observed other wagon trains preparing, in his opinion inadequately, for what was to come.  "[V]ery many started out without the necessary preparation, and suffered the penalty of their want of foresight in much suffering and unnecessary hardship and privation."

At one point along the journey, the travelers encountered one of the enormous buffalo herds that once roamed the plains, this one in full stampede and "bearing down directly upon us in fine style, causing no little apprehension for our safety."   Men from the wagon train, mounted on every horse in the party's possession, rode out with screams and gunfire aimed so as to frighten, not harm, the beasts.  They concentrated their attention on the patriarch buffalo leading the herd, and managed to turn the herd so that it avoided the wagons and their human population.  As the herd turned, and the rear of the huge long line reached the mounted men, a designated few set after them with firearms, and brought back two tender specimens to furnish a celebratory feast.

 A different sort of wheels played a big part in my mother's family, the Reeds of Logansport, Indiana.  Francis Harvey Reed, my maternal great-grandfather, was a conductor for the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis line, known by the nickname "Panhandle Route."  The line was part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system.  

My grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Reed was a switchman in the Wabash yard in Detroit, Michigan.  He was hit by a yard engine in October of 1917, and died, leaving his wife with three small children.  My mother was not yet a year old when she lost her father.

Perry Wilmer Reed and his wife Mary LeSourd adopted my mother after her father died.  Perry was a general freight agent with the Pennsylvania System, based in Chicago.  He was licensed to practice before the Interstate Commerce Commission, representing his employer.  In 1920, he moved the family to Pensacola, Florida, where he became the general freight agent for the Gulf, Florida, and Alabama Railway.

My husband's grandfather, Andrew Lewis Rhodes, was a conductor for the Pullman Company.  He lived in Jacksonville, Florida, and covered routes all over the state.  When my husband was a little boy, he would from time to time ride with grandpa on the train.

 References:

Packard, Major Wellman.  Early Emigration to California, 1849-1850. (Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press; reprint of the original, 1971). 

You can read more about my railroad Reeds in my post from last year, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 28: Trains

"Employee's Statement of Compensated Service," (Form AA-15), dated Nov. 19, 1938, Andrew Lewis Rhodes pension file, Social Security Number (redacted for security reasons); National Archives Record Group 184: Records of the Railroad Retirement Board, 1934- ; RRB--Congressional Inquiry Section, Chicago, Illinois, United States.

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Celebrate Mother's Day

 Today - Sunday, 11 May 2025 -- is Mother's Day.  Our Saturday Night mission from Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun :

1) Sunday, 11 May is Mother's Day in the USA.  Let's celebrate it by showing some of our photos with our mother.  

2)  Extra credit:  What did you call your mother during her life?  What did your children call your mother?  

3)  More extra credit:  Have you written a biography or tribute to your mother?  If so, please share a link if you have one.

4)  Share your photo(s) on your own blog post or in a Facebook or SubStack or BlueSky post.  Leave a link on this blog post to  help us find your Mom photos.

 

Mom, grandma Mary LeSourd Reed, and my sister Betty, 1940.

Mom in 1917

 

Mom on the beach in Pensacola, around 1935

 

Mom and Dad, Pensacola, about 1953

I called my mother "Mom" all my life.  Well, when I was little, it probably more often came out "Mommy."  It got funny when my daughters were little, and asked their grandmother Packard (Mom) what they should call her.   She sat very erect, put her nose a little in the air, and said, "Call me grandmama," with the accent on the first syllable, the "r" trilled in upper-class fashion, and her pinky lifted -- and a twinkle in her eye.  So she was grandmama to our daughters until she shuffled off this mortal coil.

I'm working on a biography of my mother on WikiTree.  I'll spend a little time on it today, probably before going to our older daughter's for Mother's Day cake and ice cream.