The Reid Family of Amenia

THE REED FAMILY OF AMENIA

From Data Gathered by Its Descendants Edited by Henry Noble MacCracken and Mabel V. Lawson

The Reeds in Amenia

Human migration has often been compared to the flow of a river, or the wave of a lake. There were also in the early days of the Province of New York little ripples that traversed the fringes of the colony until they flattened out along the shore in no man's land. The first of such ripples was caused by the shock of the Palatine settlement in the second decade of the eighteenth century.

Robert Livingston, the proprietor of Clermont, had secured by contract his plantation of German refugees for the purpose of making tar from the pine trees of the waterside. His overseer and first instructor in tar boiling was Richard Sackett, a New Englander from New Haven, who had been in New York. Tar boiling was a failure from many causes, the only favorable result being the ripple of emigration that sped from the tar settlement at Germantown to cover the northern part of Dutchess County from Rhinebeck east into the woods.

The boundary line was then still in dispute. Early settlers from the German Palatine group rippled eastward beyond what is now the Connecticut boundary, and crossed over into the western lands of Litchfield County where Lakeville, Salisbury, and Sharon lie today.

It was not long before the counter-shock of the Palatine settlement flowed back again into New York. With it most of the early Palatines returned from New England into New York territory. Kindly and peaceable men, they seem to have been, for they brought back their friends with them. They left behind in their earliest dwellings of northwest Connecticut little houses in the Dutch style. Of these the Rowe and the Winegar families seem to have been the most prominent, as they were apparently the most numerous. It was in the happy valley known as Amenia that these poor Palatines and their friends met another oncoming wave of migration, this time from the south, which swept up the Oblong, the strip of boundary awarded to New York as compensation for New York lands that had already been preempted by Connecticut.

In the little Amenia melting pot the first of the mixing of the ripples of migration in American history took place: Indians, Palatines, Dutch, Scots, and the sons of the Pilgrims. They looked at each other, perhaps suspiciously, but by tradition most of them had been sufferers from land aggression. There were also members of quiet and gentle religious principles. The Palatines included the so-called "Herrnhuters”, the followers of the Count of Zinzendorf, a Moravian with land in Germany, who had gone as missionaries to Holland and from there had sent out missions to many parts of the world. Among them the first settlement was in the northern part of Amenia.

The Herrnhuters met an equally famous group of Quakers who had joined themselves with the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony to dwell at first along the extreme western part of the north shore of Long Island Sound, far enough to escape the rigid oversight from New Haven. Most of the Quakers of the Oblong came up from Norwalk and its attendant village Ridgefield.

Thus it was that Newton Reed, the writer of the "Memory" came to marry a Dutch girl, whose family lived at Kinderhook, just above the Palantine pinelands. His mother, Esther Edgerton, could claim descent from the Reverend William Brewster, pastor of the "Mayflower". The Pilgrims, like the Palatines, had been displaced by their own kin. Massachusetts had preempted Plymouth, and Hartford had invaded New Haven. It was not a difficult problem for such sons of pilgrimage to bid good-bye to New England and mingle with other refugees in America's Happy Valley.

John Reed, a soldier of Oliver Cromwell, who had enlisted at sixteen, and was known as Captain Reed, was followed by his son Captain James Reed. Like most of these good people, they multiplied exceedingly, most of the settlers bringing seven sons or so. The first Reed farmer came to the very center of the present village. The children went south to meet the Quakers from Norwalk.

Eliakim, a nephew of Captain James, was the first on the Reed home farm. In each case it was the practice among the Reeds that the older, and presumably the strongest son pioneered it, and that one of the middle sons, loving the farm and quietly and affectionately disposed no doubt toward the mother and the sisters, paid off the other sons for their share and occupied the father's land. It is recorded that Ezra paid $10,000 to his brethren.

32

The Erza Reed Genealogy

From "Three Score Years and Ten" by John Horace Reed, 1915.

I have a small volume which recently came In which are recorded the folks of my name And their wives, and wives' cousins and all their relations And the record of all their abodes and migrations.

I conned it with care and with pleasure, and when I found there recorded the names of great men And great women too, whose fame is world-wide I became much elated and puffed up with pride.

There was Ezra, Eliakim, Daniel and John, Sylvester Baldwin and the Count De Bouton; There was Esther, Abiah and Grace Wetherell And Sarah Post Hough too, and Ann Borradell.

There was Dennison Senior, John Elliot's chum, A Lane 'twos not crooked, a John that was Plumb And also a Fisher, she mothered a host, And Hugh and Ann Calkins and Ellener Post.

There was Brewster the pilgrim, John Rodgers the martyr, And soldiers of Cromwell, and Knights of the Garter, And as if royal blood could these great lines enhance, There was William the Norman and Robert of France.

I have a near neighbor whose ancestry's bad. He is not even sure as to who was his dad. I bragged somewhat to him but what do you think, At this glorious record, he did not even blink.

He picked up a Bible, saying proudly to me: I look in this volume for my pedigree And if it be true, I have cause to believe I'm descended from Noah and Adam and Eve.

The Reed Family Tree

John Reed (1) b. 1633, d. 1730, m. Ann Derby. Children: John (2) Mary Thomas Abigail

John Reed (2) m. 1687, Elizabeth Tuttle Children: Ann

Daniel (3) William John Experience Mehitable Elizabeth Samuel Moses Eleazar

Daniel Reed (3) b. 1697. d. 1775, m. 1. Elizabeth Kellog, b. 1703, d. 1764 Children: Daniel Benjamin Erza Abraham Lydia Joanna Eliakin (4) James (4) Elijah Elizabeth Benjamin m. 2, 1764 Sussanna Weed

Eliakin Reed (4) b. 1725, d. 1810, m. 1748 Sarah Richards, d. 1795 Children: Sarah Silas Esther Eliakim Samuel Enoch Simeon Phineas Ruth Erza (5)

James Reed (4) m. 1760 . . . Castle Children: Daniel Amos Jacob Reuben Gilbert James Stephen Jesse Philo Elija

Erza Reed (5) b. 1765. d. 1852, m. 1. Jemina Fitch, d. 1789. Child: Harriet

m. 2, Esther Edgerton, b. 1769, d. 1852. Children: Almira Betsey Columbus Cythera Polly Catherine Fitch Newton (6) Emeline Horace

Newton Reed (6) b. 1805, d. 1896, m. 1836 Ann Van Dyck, d. 1887 Children: Mary Hooes Frances Adams Clara Cline Albert Henry Van Dyck John Horrace Catherine Matilda Cornelius

Notes On The Reed Family Tree.

Elias Reed, grandson of John (1) and brother of John (2) moved to Salisbury, Connecticut, in 1738, and was one of the original proprietors of that town. The Reeds in Salisbury and Sharon are descended from him.

John Reed (2), the oldest son of Captain John, was probably born in Rhode Island. He continued to live in Norwalk and in 1694 he was listed as a voter. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1708. His name frequently appears in the court records. He was Attorney for the Crown and Deputy for Norwalk.

Daniel (3), the fifth child of John Reed (2)'s ten children, is mentioned as a tall man, and apparently was a man of considerable distinction in Norwalk. He was born in Norwalk in 1697 and died there in 1775. He was married about the year 1719. In 1720 he built a substantial house about 60 rods northeast of the original house built by his grandfather. When this house was taken down in 1882, many family records were discovered. "Captain" James Reed (4), son of Daniel (3) was the first of the family to come to South Amenia. In 1759 he was one of a company of soldiers going to assist in the capture of Quebec. At South Amenia they found the city had already been taken. They stopped at a tavern there before going home. Whether it was the beautiful countryside qr the beautiful daughter of the landlord is uncertain, but he returned the next spring and secured both a farm and a wife.

His brother Eliakim (4) followed his example in regard to a farm, and came to South Amenia in 1773, where he bought of Isaac Delamater a farm of 200 acres for which he paid "nine hundred and Thirteen pounds of good and lawful money of the Province of New York". He soon after purchased forty acres more. Eliakim Reed and his wife Sarah Richards were born in Norwalk. Hers was the first interment in the newly laid out cemetery in South Amenia, and her husband was buried beside her.

After Eliakim's death his son Erza purchased the farm from the estate as follows: 160 acres at $30, 75 acres at $22.50, a total of $6,487.50. After Erza's death, his son Newton paid $10,000, and in turn Newton's son, Henry Van Dyck Reed, paid $9,000. In 1947 Henry Barlow paid five or six times this amount, when he bought the farm from Henry Van Dyck Reed's son George.

Erza Reed (5), the eighth of Eliakirn's ten children, was born in Norwaly in 1765, and died in South Amenia in 1852. He married first, Jemima Fitch who died in 1789, and secondly, he married Esther Edgerton, who was born probably in Hebron, Connecticut in 1769. She died in South Amenia September 6, 1852 and her ancestory is traced back to Elder 'William Brewester of Mayflower fame.

(Information about the Reed Family has been gained in a large part from Miss Ruth E. Barlow of Wassaic, N. Y.)

35

Genealogy Of The Reed Family

"Recollections" by Newton Reed

The oldest definite record of a Reed concerned the one who came to America in 1660. There is a record of his wife's parents, and even a generation earlier of other in-laws.

John Reed was born in England in 1633. He was born and raised at the time of Cromwell's revolution and he became a soldier at the age of 16. John Reed, he was later known as Captain John Reed, was from Cornwall and is supposed to have belonged to a family in Dorsetshire. A member of this family, Col. John Reed, is mentioned in parliamentary records as having held Castle of Poole a town near Bournemouth in Dorchester against the King's army.

As is well known, when the kingdom was re-established, men who had served under Cromwell found England an unsafe place, and that may have been why he decided to emigrate. He came to America — Providence, Rhode Island, in 1660. There he married a widow, Mrs. Ann Derby, who already had three children, and in time became the mother of five Reed children. He must have been a man of considerable means, for in 1684 he removed to Norwalk, Connecticut, where he purchased a large tract of land which became known as "Reed's Farms". It was in the western part of the town near the Five Mile River, a creek that formed the western boundary of the town. He built a house on the old Post Road, about two miles from Long Island Sound. The house was torn down in 1862, and the last one to occupy this house, a Walter Reed, said the house had a capacious chimney, which was so excellently built, that when the house was demolished, the chimney had to be blasted apart.

There was a family burying ground on the farm, as was customary in those days, and after the farm had passed out of the family, this plot was reserved. In 1886, Newton Reed was one of the family instrumental in having a granite stone erected on Captain John Reed's grave.

36