Amos Reed
Amos Reed was born on 19 May 1840 in Pike County, Kentucky, the son of Hiram Reed and Lucy Reed. Both his parents were Virginians, and his mother was a Reed by birth, the daughter of Humphrey Reed of Montgomery County. In 1850 the census taker in Pike County found him, aged nine, in the house of Hiram Reed, 45, and Lucy Reed, 39, both born in Virginia, with nine brothers and sisters: George, Johnathan, Hannah, Susannah, Humphrey, Miram, Lydia, Wallis and Mahala. The three eldest had been born in Virginia and the rest in Kentucky.
Soon after, the family went back over the line. Amos later swore that he had lived in Virginia since about 1852. In 1860 Hiram, 53, was farming in Scott County, in the far southwest corner of the state, and Amos, 18, was at home with Ruth Reed, 49, his sister Susanah, his brother Humphrey and seven younger children.
He enlisted on 6 April 1862 at Camp Moccasin, the Confederate camp at Moccasin Gap in Scott County, signed up by Gen. Humphrey Marshall for three years. He was twenty-one. His company, under Capt. Harvey Gray, was Company E of the 21st Battalion Virginia Infantry, the "Pound Gap Battalion" raised to hold the mountain passes between Kentucky and southwest Virginia. In December 1862 the battalion was folded into the new 64th Regiment Virginia Mounted Infantry, commanded by Col. Campbell Slemp and known by turns as the Slemp regiment, the 64th Virginia Infantry and the 64th Virginia Cavalry. Amos stayed in Company E. He drew clothing on 3 May 1862 and again on 23 March 1863, and he was present at every muster from the end of 1862 through June 1863. He was last paid by H. C. Slemp to 30 June 1863.
In the late summer of 1863 the regiment was part of the garrison at Cumberland Gap, where Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee meet. On 9 September 1863 its commander, Gen. John W. Frazer, surrendered the Gap without a fight to the Union army of Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Col. Slemp and some six hundred men slipped away into the mountains. Amos was not among them. He was one of 425 men of the 64th taken prisoner. Two days later he was handed over to Col. James W. Reilly of the 104th Ohio Infantry. He was entered on the rolls of the military prison at Louisville, and on 24 September he was sent on to Camp Douglas, the prison camp on the prairie at the south edge of Chicago. He arrived on 26 September 1863.
Camp Douglas was low, wet ground with no sewers, and roughly one prisoner in six who entered it died there. Amos spent twenty-one months inside it. On 15 December 1863 his name went onto a roll of prisoners who wished to take the oath of allegiance to the United States, with one word beside it: "Conscripted." Nothing came of it that winter. He was released only after the war was over, on 15 June 1865, under General Orders No. 109, when he signed the oath with his mark. The clerk described him: dark complexion, dark hair, grey eyes, five feet four inches tall, of Scott County, Virginia, bound for Bristol, Tennessee.
He came home to Scott County. On 31 December 1866 he married Sarah A. Elam there. She was twenty, born in Scott County, the daughter of Wesley and Margaret Elam. The county clerk wrote the groom down as Amos Rude, aged thirty, born in Yancey County, North Carolina, the son of Hiram Rude. Every other record of his life gives Kentucky and a birth in 1840. In 1870 the couple were living in De Kalb district of Scott County, and in 1880 in Walker district of Wise County with James R., Rebecca J., Hiram J., Elbert C. and Charles E. They settled on the Cranes Nest at Freeling, in the mountain country that became Dickenson County in 1880, and farmed there for the rest of their lives. Their children were James Robert, born 1868, Hiram J. in 1870, Rebecca J., Hannah M., Maggie A., who died before 1912, John Willis, Elbert Carson in 1877, Meredith Calvin in 1889, and Charley E. The census taker of June 1900 found Amos, 60, and Sarah Ann, married thirty-three years, in Clintwood district with five children still at home. In 1910 only Meredith, 20, was left with them.
In September 1903, aged sixty-four, he applied to the Commonwealth of Virginia for a Confederate disability pension. He told the notary at Clintwood that he had farmed "ever since I was a man", that rheumatism and a nervous complaint brought on by "exposure in the army" had troubled him since the war, and that "I can do about one half what I use to do." He named two men still living who could vouch for his service, Polk Gibson and his old captain, Gray. Joel Gibson and a George Reed swore to his service as witnesses. George was the name of his eldest brother, but the papers do not say this was the same man. The Dickenson County camp of Confederate Veterans, under J. S. Colley, endorsed him, and the county board allowed the claim. In 1904 he filed again under the act of 1900. The commissioner of the revenue certified that everything he and Sarah Ann owned, land and goods together, was assessed at $183. He signed the papers with his mark.
By 1920 the two old people were alone at Clintwood, and their sons were in the Kentucky coal camps over Pine Mountain. Sarah Ann died at Freeling on 2 August 1925 after nearly two years of illness. Amos had had a stroke two or three weeks before and had not recovered. He went to live with his children in Kentucky, and he died at the home of his son John Reed at Burdine, Letcher County, on 24 March 1932, aged 91, "having been in failing health for some time". He was taken back over the mountain and buried on 25 March in what the paper called the Cumberland cemetery at Freeling, the ground now known as the McFall-Reed Cemetery at Clintwood, beside Sarah Ann. He left six sons and two daughters, "most of whom live in Kentucky".
A photograph kept by his descendants shows an old man with a full white beard and round spectacles, in a dark coat.
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Cite: Heirology, "Amos Reed (1840-1932)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/amos-reed-1840-1932-e82058.