User:GhostRiver/reed

Early and family life
Walter Reed was born on September 13, 1851, at a cottage in Belroi, Virginia. He was the youngest of five children born to Methodist minister Lemuel Reed and his first wife, Pharaba White. His father's occupation meant that the family moved frequently throughout Reed's childhood, with the Methodist Conference sending him to places such as Gatesville and Murfreesboro, North Carolina, and Farmville, Virginia.

Personal life
Reed met Emilie Blackwell Lawrence while visiting his father in Murfreesboro. Because he was living in Brooklyn at the time, he courted her through a series of letters, and the pair married on April 26, 1876. Walter and Emilie had three children together. Their oldest, Walter L. Reed, was born in 1877 at Fort Apache, Arizona, while their daughter Emilie Lawrence Reed, known by her nickname Blossom, was born in 1883 in Omaha, Nebraska. Their third child, Susie, was an Indigenous girl who had been abandoned by her family after suffering severe burns in an accident. The Reeds took her in during their stay at Fort Apache, and she remained with the family for fifteen years before leaving home and losing contact with them.