Meredith Calvin Reed
Meredith Calvin Reed was born on 11 June 1889 in Dickenson County, Virginia, at or near Freeling on the Cranes Nest, the youngest but two of the children of Amos Reed and Sarah Ann Reed. His father was a Kentuckian born in 1840 who had fought for the Confederacy, been taken prisoner at Cumberland Gap and settled at Freeling after his parole. His mother was a Virginian. In June 1900 the household at Clintwood district held Amos, 60, Sarah Ann, married thirty-three years, and five children at home: Hannah M., John Willis, Merideth, Charley E. and Elbert C. In 1910 Meredith, 20 and single, was the last child left with his parents, then 68 and 65.
On 11 January 1917 he married Margaret Baker in Dickenson County. He was 25 by the register, she was 18 by it and 17 by her birthday, a Clintwood girl, the daughter of John T. and Frankie Baker. Their first child, Lillie May, was born in Virginia on 28 November 1917. That year he registered for the draft at Dickenson County as Meredith Calvin Reed, born 11 June 1889 at Freeburg, as the clerk wrote it.
Then he went over the mountain. By September 1919, when Lydia Lee was born, the family was in Kentucky, and in January 1920 the census taker at Burdine, the Consolidation Coal Company camp below Jenkins in Letcher County, found "Merida Reed", 26, head of a household at number 630 with Margarette, 19, Lillie, 2, and Lydia, four months. He was a coal miner. Burdine and Jenkins had been built by the company from nothing in 1911 and 1912, and the camps drew their men from the Virginia side of Pine Mountain; his father, old Amos, came over too and died at the home of John Reed at Burdine in 1932.
Eleven more children followed Lillie and Lydia: Winston Troy in 1921 and John McCoy, called Coy, on Christmas Day 1922, both at Burdine, then William, Margie, Norma Aileen, Charles Otis in April 1935 at Jenkins, Shirley Ann, Carolyn, Paul Ervin and Paula, thirteen in all. The marriage certificates of five of them name him as father: Lilly, Margie, Shirley and John McCoy in Virginia, and John McCoy and Paul Ervin again in Ohio, where the family's younger half went after the war.
He mined coal at Burdine for the rest of his working life and retired a miner. He died on 22 February 1956 at Virgie, in Pike County, the next county down the Elkhorn, aged 66. The Kentucky death certificate calls him Merdith Calvin Reed, retired miner, born in Virginia about 1890, son of Amos Reed and Sarah Ellin Collins, and gives his burial place as Burdine. No stone has been found. Margaret outlived him by twenty-four years and died at Troy, Ohio, in 1980; her obituary says only "Her husband, Merideth Reed, died in 1956."
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Cite: Heirology, "Meredith Calvin Reed (1889-1956)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/meredith-calvin-reed-1889-1956-1acfdd.