WALTER HOWARD REID

REID, SUNDAY, SANDERS, GRIFFITH, HOUGEN, HANSON, PECK, MCCALL, MARTIN

Posted By: Tamara Jorstad (email)
Date: 9/15/2002 at 23:16:48

Published in the 1969 McCallsburg Centennial booklet:

The W.H. Reid Family

Walter Howard Reid was born in Morning Sun, Louisa County, Iowa. His father and mother, Samuel and Tressie, later moved to Waco, Texas and then back to Nevada where Samuel had a store. It was during the time that Billy Sunday, the Evangelist, lived there. He and Howard played ball together. Then the family moved to McCallsburg in 1887 where Samuel started a grocery store where the Dorcas Hall now is. In 1890 he started a hardware store across the street east. Howard and his brother, Oscar, ran it. Oscar died in 1892. Before this however they built a building across the street south and started the Reid Brother's Hardware Store. Howard continued for fifty years in this location.

Howard was married to Ruth Belle Sanders in 1892. Ruth had come from Wheatfield, Indiana to Story County, Warren Township in 1875 with her parents and sisters and brothers in a covered wagon when she was only six weeks old. The reason they chose this location was because her father had a friend there, Asa Griffiths. That same year her father, James F. Sanders bought a farm a mile south of the west road out of what is now McCallsburg. This farm was later sold to Mr. Hougen. At that time there were only a few families living there. An older sister remembers the Griffiths, Hansons, John Pecks and some others. It was not incorporated into a town until after the railroad was built from Story City to Marshalltown. At first it was called "Latrobe." Later it was named McCallsburg for Mr. McCall who drew for a chance to name it.

Samuel Reid died in 1898 but his wife "Tressie Reid" spent the rest of her life in McCallsburg. The Sanders family moved to Ames then to California but came back to McCallsburg and there the rest of their lives. Mrs. Sanders lived to ninety-four years old.

Except for about two years when they lived in Marshalltown, Howard and Ruth Reid lived in McCallsburg for as long as they lived. They had three children - a son who died at birth, a daughter, Mildred, who died at the age of twelve and Mrs. Sidney Dean Martin (Leah) who now lives in Carroll, Iowa.