Sarah Ann Elam
Sarah Ann Elam was born in Scott County, Virginia, in February 1846, the daughter of Wesley Elam and Margaret Bond, who had married in Scott County in May 1843. In 1850 the family lived in Scott County: Wesley, 25, Margaret, 24, who had been born in Indiana, and the children Rebecca J., 6, Sarah A., 4, James M., 2, and William M., 1. A brother, Wesley Elbert, followed in December 1853.
On 31 December 1866, aged twenty, she married Amos Reed in Scott County. He had been home eighteen months from Camp Douglas, the Union prison at Chicago where he had spent the last two years of the war. They lived first in Scott County, then in Walker district of Wise County, and settled on the Cranes Nest at Freeling in what became Dickenson County. She raised at least eight children there: James Robert, Hiram J., Rebecca J., named for her elder sister, Hannah M., John Willis, Elbert Carson, Meredith Calvin and Charley E. A daughter, Maggie A., died before 1912. In 1900 she had been married thirty-three years and had five children still at home; in 1910 only Meredith; in 1920 she and Amos were alone. In 1904 Amos told the commonwealth that everything the two of them owned was worth $183.
She fell ill about 1923 and died at Freeling on 2 August 1925, past seventy-nine, "after an illness covering a period of nearly two years". Amos had suffered a stroke two or three weeks before and had not recovered. She was buried in the McFall-Reed Cemetery at Clintwood, where Amos joined her in 1932.
Her own Virginia death certificate of 1925 names her parents Wesley Elam and Margret Bond. Her maiden name is Elam there, on her marriage record of 1866, on both records of the 1946 marriage of her son John, and on her grave. Her son Meredith's Kentucky death certificate of 1956 gives his mother as Sarah Ellin Collins, the one record that disagrees.
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Cite: Heirology, "Sarah Ann Elam (1846-1925)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/sarah-ann-elam-1846-1925-ce20a9.