Family · the lines · Reed

A Door in Connecticut

the Reed line, and the locked door at its head

This line runs clean and certain back five generations — and then stops, all at once, at a man with no past. The Reeds are well-documented New Yorkers of the Oneida Valley; the mystery is only at the source, where a Connecticut farmer called "John C. Read" stands with his parents, his birthplace, and his wife's name all blank. It is the family's deepest brick wall — and, perhaps, its only true secret.

c. 1755 → now · Durham, Connecticut → the Oneida Valley → Central New York

c.1755Gen I · Durham, Connecticut · 41.48°N 72.68°W

John Read

the brick wall

"John C. Read" — the middle C steady across forty years of censuses — farmed by Reed's Gap at Durham, born about 1755, last seen in the 1840 census. His parents, his birthplace, and his wife Rebecca's maiden name are all unrecorded. The family's stubborn tradition of a "foreigner" ancestor finds its likeliest grain of truth one rung above him: a "John Read, a foreigner" whose small, insolvent estate was settled at Cheshire in 1803 — an immigrant father, perhaps, or perhaps a stranger of the same name. The door has not opened.

the trail ends here

1786Gen II · Wallingford → Oneida Valley · 41.46°N 72.82°W

William K. Reed

carried the name west

Born at Wallingford, he carried the name out of Connecticut to the Oneida Valley of New York. His 1852 will — read at last this June — names his wife Jane and seven children in his own hand, closing the New York generation and confirming the line's descent. Of his father's origin, even his will says nothing.

1817Gen III · Lenox, Madison Co., NY · 43.06°N 75.74°W

Edmund M. Reed

"Edmund M. Reed, Sr."

Named among his father's heirs, he lived and died in the Oneida Valley, styled "Sr." on the family monument to set him apart from his own son. The Reeds are settled New Yorkers now.

1850Gen IV · Oneida Valley, NY · 43.08°N 75.66°W

Daniel Constable Reed

farmer · angler · constable

A retired farmer and a noted angler on Oneida Lake, given to annual trout excursions in the North Woods — and, fittingly, the town's "D. C. Reed, Constable" in its audited ledgers, his middle name made literal.

1876Gen V · Oneida Valley → Sherrill · 43.07°N 75.60°W

James Huntley Reed

Army bandsman · Oneida, Ltd.

A private in the regimental band of the 16th U.S. Infantry in the Philippine-Insurrection years, later a long-time hand at the silverware works of Oneida, Ltd. His middle name carries another whole river into this one — the Huntleys, who married in a generation before.

1907Gen VI · the bridge · 43.21°N 75.46°W

Dorothy Ester Reed

— and the rivers meet

In 1929 she married Samuel Newcomb Kirkland — the marriage that joined the Reed line to the maternal Kirkland and Doig sides, and turned this whole current toward the present. The Reed name ends here as a surname and continues as inheritance.

1936Gen VII · Rome, New York · 43.21°N 75.46°W

Sally Ann Kirkland

Tim's maternal grandmother

Their daughter married John Alvin Doig and carried the Reed inheritance one generation nearer.

—Gen VIII · Central New York

Vickey-Jo Doig

Tim's mother

Through her the Reed line of the Oneida Valley reaches the living branch of the family.

nowGen IX · the keeper of the line

Timothy VanBenschoten

— and then you

Who reopened the will, ran the censuses, and walked the line back to the door at Durham — and left it honestly shut, with the knock still echoing.

A line that runs clean to a locked door — and stops there, honestly, rather than inventing a key.

IX generations · Connecticut to Central New York · one wall unbroken

Every name here rests on a primary record or a sound inference in the family archive. The wall at the head is left as a wall — a documented gap beats a fabricated bridge.

← All the stories The tree