Samuel Reed
Samuel Reed, retired farmer, Germantown, was born in Berks, now Schuylkill County, Penn., on the 20th of September, 1796, and was married on his birth-day, in 1828, to Sarah Leinbach, who departed this life on the 10th of June, 1877. They were the parents of four children, one only of whom came to the years of maturity, an honored son, John Henry, who on the 6th of September, 1860, married Mattie Zeller, whose parents were natives of this county. They were the parents of four children--Mary Magdalene, Albert Eugene (deceased), Sarah Lulu and Charles S. John Henry was a natural musician, and had considerable taste as an artist. He was, for a term or more, Township Assessor and Clerk, and was for a number of years a dry goods merchant in Germantown. He died June 7, 1874, in the forty-fifth year of his age, leaving an interesting family to mourn his death. The subject of our sketch, Samuel Reed, came to Ohio in 1825, in company with William Hunsinger, on horseback, for the purpose of purchasing a homestead for his mother, in lieu of her dower in the old homestead in Pennsylvania. During his visit, he remembers seeing Gen. Lafayette in Cincinnati. He has two brothers yet living--Jeremiah, aged eighty-one, and Martin D., aged seventy-seven. Mr. Reed's father, John Reed, died in 1804, when Samuel was but eight years old. His mother, Mary M. Reed, subsequently married Abram Snyder, and died on the day Gen. Harrison was inaugurated President. The family emigrated to Ohio in 1833, coming in wagons, and consuming four weeks in the journey. They landed near Dayton in the month of June, and the following September came to German Township, where they have since lived. Prior to leaving Pennsylvania, Mr. Reed was entrusted to the settling up of various estates, and did some of the same kind of business in this country, amounting in the aggregate to several thousand dollars. He is the owner of 170 acres of land, and while too infirm to perform manual labor, yet at the advanced age of eighty-six years he superintends his farm with much of the agility of his younger years. He also superintends another farm of 150 acres. He learned the trade of paper-maker when a boy, and followed it for sixteen years; when he was apprenticed to his employer, he was discharged and sent home with instructions to put him to some other trade, but this his mother would not agree to, and he was sent to another man for three years, for the sum of $30 and six months' schooling. He has lived in German Township for more than forty-seven years, and is now enjoying the latter years of his life with his widowed daughter-in-law, Mrs. J. H. Reed, and is very happily situated on the corner of Plum and Center streets. He has served as School Director for twenty-five years, and is closing up a long and useful life, and his memory will be cherished long after death by those of his church (German Reformed) and others who knew his worth the best.
From History of Montgomery County, Ohio, W. H. Beers & Co., Chicago, 1882
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