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.)

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!

 

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.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 15 -- Big Mistake

This week in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Amy Johnson Crow wants us to 'fess up.  

My Big Mistake wasn't specifically made with genealogy in mind, but turned out to be related to genealogy long before I got bit by the genea-bug.

My grandma, Mary (LeSourd) Reed, was really my grand-aunt.  My mother was an intra-family adoption.  I never knew any of my actual grandparents, maternal or paternal.  

But "Chollie," as we all knew her, was as much my grandmother as anyone who bears that genealogical label for reals.  And she had a bunch of stories about her life in Indiana, where she was born and raised, and where she was married to Perry Reed.   There were also stories about the time she and her husband and family lived in Pensacola, Florida, later on.  Many stories involved my maternal great-grandparents, too, and some of my grand-uncle Perry Reed's siblings.

I was a teenager; it was the early to mid 1960s.  My mom had given me a little inexpensive tape recorder.  The sound quality wasn't the best, but it was adequate.  The mistake?

I didn't record my grandma's stories when I had the chance.

So many times in the intervening years since she died in 1978, I have wished I had recorded those stories.  Several of them would have helped me sort out the various members of the extended Reed clan, and would have provided information to liven up their entries on the family tree.

I do remember one story, however, and will share it here, now.

My great-grandmother Florence Elizabeth (McKee) Reed was a formidable woman who ruled the large Reed clan with an iron hand.  One day, sometime in the 1890s, she made a large pot of oyster stew.  She ladled a portion into a tureen and corralled two or three of her sons to take it around to an old lady who lived in the neighborhood.  All the children were convinced the old lady was a witch.  When I was a child in the 1950s, we had such an elderly woman in our neighborhood, subject of the wild imaginations of children and nothing else. 

The Reed boys approached the old woman's home with trepidation.  Steeling themselves to the task, and more fearful of reporting failure back to their mother than of any possibility of supernatural power on the part of the home's lone resident, they knocked on the door.  When the woman answered their knock, one of the boys said something like, "Please, ma'am, our mother made this oyster stew, and thought you might like some."  They handed over the tureen.

The old lady said in return, "Well, you tell your mother thank you, and that I'm not particularly fond of oyster stew, but seeing as how she was so kind to have made it for me, I'll eat it if it pukes me!"

The boys dashed off the porch and ran home, and we aren't sure if they were screaming in fear or in laughter all the way.

"Seeing as how you've been so kind as to make it for me, I'll eat it if it pukes me" became a family saying, meaning thanks for the meal, and it was grandly delicious.  

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 14: Language

 This week, on 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, the blogging prompt is Language.

Puns!

Alfred Hitchcock, of all people, is credited with having observed that "Puns are the highest form of literature."  Mary Livingstone, wife of 20th century comedian Jack Benny, wrote an article in "Liberty" magazine in 1942 giving humorous instruction on how to live with a comedian.  Every family has one, at least, she observed.  She remarked that there is also always at least one in a family who thinks puns are the lowest form of humor because he (or she) didn't think of them first.

Puns have a history in my family.  My grand-uncle, Perry Wilmer Reed, came from a literate and intelligent family.  He was apparently fond of puns, because in the midst of writing a number of hymns and popular songs as a side-hustle, he penned this humorous ditty to the tune of "Silver Threads Among the Gold:"

I learned of puns from my mother, who grew up in Perry Reed's household as his adopted daughter.  In the early days of the internet, as a member of a Bulletin Board System (BBS) group called The Bardroom, I developed an international reputation as a punster.  I passed this on to our daughters.  One day, after my daughters and I had exchanged a mass of puns derived from movie titles or dialogue and song lyrics, my son-in-law Karl sighed, "In this family, everything is either a movie quote or a song cue."

"You're welcome," I answered.

Karl grimaced.  "Or a pun."  Like he should talk; he's no slouch in the pun department.  And, with both parents being able punsters, our grandson has the gene.  He made his first pun at the age of 5.

Alas, grandma was too busy laughing to think of writing it down.

 Puns are language, too.  People either relish them or abhor them, it seems.  Puns are a complex form of humor that requires the involvement of both hemispheres of the brain, according to "Your Pun-divided Attention," a short article in Scientific American magazine (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/your-pun-divided-attention-how-the-brain-processes-wordplay/).  This leads some to conclude that puns require higher intelligence, a conclusion disputed by others.  

What puns require, according to the Scientific American article, is a functioning, unimpaired right hemisphere, which is the area that processes the meanings of the word being used in the pun.  

Which only goes to show that in order to be a successful punster, you have to be in your right mind.