PRELIMINARY NOTES TOWARD A BIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS HENRY REID, SR.

Thomas Henry Reid Sr. (Papa)

Thomas Henry Reid, Sr. was the oldest census-listed son of Kitty Reid and an unnamed father or husband (1870 and 1880 census records viewed 09/2000 by Rega Reid). It is not certain from the 1870-80 cenus whether Reid was Kittyâs married or maiden name. She is listed as having been born in 1844.

The 1870-80 census viewed by Rega Reid lists Kitty as living in Griffin, Georgia, and as having four children by 1880. Lela (or Leila) was born in 1864. Tom Sr. was born in 1866. Jack was born in 1868. Edward was born in 1871. The 1870 census lists Kitty as a seamstress in 1870 and as a washerwoman in 1880. Tom Sr. was listed as a painter in the 1880 census; Jack as a domestic servant. Lela is not listed as a member of Kittyâs household in the 1880 census.

While the cenus of 1870-80 identifies Kitty as a black female, her four children are identified as "mulatto".

When I was a pre-teenager, I remember family talk that the Reids were mixed with Cherokee. Later, when I was in my 20âs, perhaps, I remember that the tribe identification changed to Seminole. I cannot recall who it was that told me either tribal name. Presently, the family consensus appears to be that the Reids were mixed with Seminole.

Lela Reid [Tom Reid Sr.'s older sister, with unknown child, date unknown]

The family has in its possession a picture [see above] identified as Lela Reid, which my mother obtained from her older sister, Dorothy Reid Pete. The picture shows a dark-skinned African-American woman in her 20âs in turn-of-the-20th-century clothes, holding an infant. The woman has features that are clearly of Native American mixture. I believe that handwriting on the cardboard frame of the picture identifies Lela Reid as "Papaâs sister". Although I cannot now say why, I believe that the handwritten identification was done by one of Tom Reid Sr.âs children and, since he was called "Papa" by his children, I am assuming that the Lela Reid in the picture was, therefore, Tom Reid Sr.âs sister. The fact that Lela and Tom Reid Sr. were brother and sister is also, of course, corroborated by the 1870 census records. I also believe that the handwriting on the picture identifies Lela Reid as a Seminole. However, it has been perhaps six months or more since Iâve seen the actual pictture, so I cannot be sure at the present time whether the "Seminole" designation actually exists on the picture frame.

Ivy Reid Lewis (daughter of Charles Reid, granddaughter of Tom Sr. and Jenny Reid) says that according to her father, Tom Sr. told his children that when he was bad as a child, his mother used to tie him to the chimney.

Tom Sr. came to California in 1888 (records of Bob Reid, Mel and Betty Reid's son).

The Reid Home In Griffin, Georgia (circa 1975)

The family legend is that Tom Sr. was forced to come to California from Georgia because of some sort of trouble. Apparently, this episode was well-known among the children of Tom Sr. and Jenny Reid. My mother, Maybelle Reid Allen (daughter of Tom Sr. and Jenny Reid) says that her older sister, Alberta Reid Bouldin, once told her that "Papa killed a man in Georgia." As my mother tells it, Aunt Bert viewed the incident with some shame, although my mother herself thinks that it was probably justified considering the times. My mother says she heard that "Papa" (Tom Sr.) had to leave because a white woman in Griffin was sexually interested in him. Ivy Reid Lewis told me the following story about Tom Sr.âs departure from Griffin (she said she heard the story from her father): Tom Sr. got in some sort of trouble with a white man or a group of white men in Griffin, and was told that the men were coming out to his house to kill him. Tom Sr. and a friend of his, named only as "Johnson", set a trap for the white men. They put a dummy in a rocking chair on the porch of Tom Sr.âs home, with a rope tied to one of the rocker legs. Tom Sr. and Johnson then hid in the bushes near the house, pulling the rope in order to make it appear as if a person was sitting in the chair, rocking. They kept their horses tied to a tree in the woods nearby. When the white men rode into the yard they were fooled, and Tom Sr. (and possibly Johnson, as well) fired shots at them. This would, apparently, be the source of both the stories of the white woman trouble and the white man killing. In either event, following the incident, Tom Sr. and Johnson fled Griffin on horseback and later made their way to California by stagecoach. According to Ivy, Tom Sr. told his son, Charlie, that the stagecoach was held up by the infamous outlaw, Joaquin Murietta.

Tom Reid, Sr. [date unknown]
The photographer location indication of Waukesha, Wisconsin at the lower right of the photo would indicate that this photograph may have been taken during Tom Reid's journey from Georgia to California, as there is no indication in family history that he returned back east from the West Coast after settling there.

According to Ivy, Tom Sr. was 6 feet tall and, reportedly, very muscular and, by various family sources, very strong. He lived for a time in San Franciscoâs barbary coast district roughly in the years 1888-1896. Unconfrimed family legend has it that he worked as a bouncer in prizefighter Gentleman Jim Corbettâs saloon in San Francisco. Ivy told me that she heard this information from her father, Charles. My mother also told me that Tom Jr. learned this information by accident. Apparently, Tom Jr. heard the Jim Corbett story from some man he met (perhaps in Berkeley) who had known Tom Sr. in his San Francisco days.

Sometime in the period 1888-1896, Tom Sr. met his future wife, Jenny Parker, while she was living in San Francisco. When he proposed to her, family legend has it that he gave her a choice: they could live in relative luxury in San Francisco with Tom Sr. making money from whatever he was doing in the saloons and gambling houses, or they could move to a rural setting and live in hard-working, honest Christian poverty. Jenny chose the rural life, away from San Francisco.

During the first years of their marriage, Tom Sr. and Jenny lived in Angels Camp, California, where their first four children (Tom Jr., Charles, Lela (clearly named for her aunt), and Alberta) were born. Tom Sr. apparently spent some portion of his time during these years back in the San Francisco Bay Area, as I have a copy in my possession (somewhere) a letter written from him in San Francisco to Jenny in Angels Camp.

Sometime after Alberta was born, the Reids moved to Berkeley, where they had nine more children (Ruth, Paul (nicknamed Cud), Ralph, Boots, Dorothy, Robert, Florence, Maybelle, and Hazel·not necessarily in this order). Ralph died at a young age, perhaps four or five, after falling off a fence on his head (according to family stories). Boots died at the age of 14 from consumption (tuberculosis), which he contracted from clothes given to him by a merchant marine uncle who contracted the disease overseas.

Tom Reid, Sr., Melvin Reid (grandson), and Alberta Reid (daughter) [date unknown, although the size of Mel places the age of the photograph in the early 1920s]

Thomas Sr. worked at various jobs, including carpentry and painting. He often told his children that he had helped build the Shattuck Hotel in Berkeley.

The Shattuck Hotel, Berkeley, which Tom Reid told his children he helped to build

In his last years, he worked as a janitor at Continental Bakeries in Berkeley, where his oldest son, Tom Jr., held a supervisor's job. According to my mother, Thomas Sr. used to walk across town from the family home on Oregon Street to work at the bakery. In January, 1931, he contracted pneumonia, but continued to work. His illness was exacerbated by the dampness and cold in the air from his job of mopping the bakery floor. One evening he walked back home from work, went to bed in terrible pain, and died.

Funeral Bill For Thomas Reid Sr.

Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor
Grandson of Thomas Henry Reid, Sr.
October, 2000 [with later minor amendments]
Oakland, California

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