Reed, Philo E.

Born: 1831-06-20 Trumbull County, Ohio

Died: 1863-02-03 Dover, Tennessee

Flourished: 1857 to 1862 Monmouth, Illinois

Philo E. Reed, attorney and soldier, was born in Hartford, Ohio. He was educated locally before briefly attending an academy in West Farmington, Ohio. Reed taught school for a year in Altoona, Pennsylvania, then returned to Ohio and read law in the town of Warren. He qualified for the bar in 1854 and opened a legal office in Warren. About 1857 Reed moved to Monmouth, Illinois, where he continued to practice law and served as city attorney in 1861. Politically, Reed was a Republican, and he represented Warren County at the 1858 and 1860 Illinois Republican conventions and campaigned heavily on behalf of the party in Warren County in those years. In July 1862, Reed enlisted in the Eighty-Third Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment with the rank of captain. He was killed in action near Fort Donelson in Tennessee the following February. Reed married Minerva Drake in 1855 and the pair had at least one son.

History of Trumbull and Mahoning Counties (Cleveland: H. Z. Williams & Bro., 1882), 1:185; Western Reserve Chronicle (Warren, OH), 7 February 1855, 3:8; 27 August 1856, 2:3; 19 November 1856, 4:3; Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993, 22 November 1855, Trumbull County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); The Monmouth Review (IL), 28 August 1857, 2:3; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 17 June 1858, 2:4; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Monmouth, Warren County, IL, 164; Wayne C. Temple, “Delegates to the Illinois State Republican Nominating Convention in 1860,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 92 (Autumn 1999), 297; The Press and Tribune (Chicago, IL), 18 August 1860, 2:3; The Past and Present of Warren County, Illinois (Chicago: H. F. Kett, 1877), 159; Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Chicago Daily Tribune (IL), 6 February 1863, 1:4; Macomb Weekly Journal (IL), 20 February 1863, 2:2-3; Gravestone, Monmouth Cemetery, Monmouth, IL.