Primary Source Documents
Through all my research it has been extremely hard for me to find Reed's family. I still haven't found them. I began with bits and pieces that I use to try to find them, but I haven't been successful yet. I have learned that his wife and son moved to the state of Washington after the war because that's where her family was. Since I haven't been able to find them I haven't seen any letters or anything of Reed's that he sent home. I would really like to meet them and correspond with them someday to tell them about what I have learned through the Normandy Institute. I want to know more about Reed and to learn what he was like. I think it would be amazing to read the letters he sent home and to see family pictures of him.
High School Yearbooks
My most important primary sources were old yearbooks from Eastern High School. These were my most helpful resources and I really enjoyed going through them. They gave a glimpse of what his life was like. I learned he was in FFA, just like I am, and that he attended the National FFA Convention, which I have done as well. It showed the many similarities between us from FFA to sports and everything in between. I felt that through the yearbooks, I could glimpse his life when he was my age. One of the most interesting things I found in the yearbook was an article about basketball that told of Eastern playing my own school, Rutland, in 1940.
College Yearbooks
I wanted to learn about what he studied in college, so I went to the South Dakota State University Briggs Library and looked at the college yearbooks. I found him and his wife Erma in the yearbooks. I learned that he went to school for agriculture and was there for 3 years. Erma was 2 years younger than him and participated in choir while she was there. She didn't go to SDSU for very long, I could only find her in 1 yearbook.
Census Records
I found out about Reed's family through the 1940 Census. His dad was a farmer, like most men in our area during that time. His sister was 13 at the time of the census and he was 18. I learned that he wasn't originally from Madison. He was born in Minnesota and then his family moved here later.
ancestry.com_-_1940_united_states_federal_census.webarchive | |
File Size: | 1508 kb |
File Type: | webarchive |
Newspaper Clippings/Information from the Karl Mundt Library
I visited the Karl Mundt Library in Madison, SD. It was there that I found the Eastern High School yearbooks and I also got information on Reed's parents and a newspaper clipping of him after he died overseas.
Documents from the National Archives
When we were in Washington, D.C., learning about WWII, one of the days was spent at the National Archives and we got to research our soldier and their unit. I have pictures that I took there that I used on this website and for my research.