Reed-Carey Family Papers, 1931-2002
Held by The Filson Historical Society
Creator: Reed-Carey family
Title: Papers, 1931-2002
Rights: For information regarding literary and copyright interest for these papers, contact the Collections Department.
Size of Collection: 0.5 cu. ft. (in 1.0 cu. ft. box) and 1 ovsz. wrapped vol.
Location Number: Mss. A R323
Biographical Note
Edsel Sherwood Reed (1923-2022), called “Sherwood” as a child and young man and later “Ed” and “Edsel,” was born in Bowen, Kentucky, to George W. Reed and Mattie Elizabeth Palmer Reed. He graduated from Powell County High School, Morehead State Teachers College, University of Louisville School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Medicine, and a residency program in radiology at University of Louisville. He became a radiologist and was a long-time member and deacon of the First Baptist Church.
In 1943 during World War II, Edsel Reed was drafted into the Army and served first at Nicholas Army General Hospital and then as a medical student in the Army specialized training program at the University of Louisville. He graduated from medical school in 1946 and interned at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, where he met and married Allie Ruth Carey.
Allie Ruth Carey (1925-) was born to Levi Carey and Bessie Grose Carey in Marion, Indiana. She grew up in the farming community of Upland, outside Marion. Allie graduated from Marion High School in 1942 and worked for a year at the local telephone company.
In 1943, she was admitted to the Good Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing and worked as a cadet nurse with the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps (CNC) program until graduating in 1946. The CNC was created in June of 1943 to meet an urgent need for nurses during World War II. The Bolton Nurse Training Act paid nursing schools to expand and accelerate their programs and paid nursing students to pursue training. More than 100,000 American women served as members of the corps in a miliary role or an essential civilian role for the duration of the war.
Allie Carey and Edsel Sherwood Reed married on December 23, 1947, in Lexington. According to Allie’s notes and recollections, she worked after the war at Kentucky Baptist Hospital in Louisville and at the Girl Scouts’ Camp Shantituck. She had to quit her hospital job when she became pregnant, and Allie and Edsel’s daughter Patricia was born in Kentucky in October 1949.
Edsel Sherwood Reed served as chief of radiology service at the U.S. Army Hospital in Fort Clayton, Panama Canal Zone, in 1951-1953, and Allie joined him there with their daughter. After Edsel’s separation from the Army in 1953, the family moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, where Edsel joined a radiology group. The family moved back to the Kentucky and Indiana area in 1956, and Edsel became the first full-time radiologist at Clark County Memorial Hospital in Jeffersonville, Indiana, in 1958.
In the 1960s Allie Reed returned to school to get a BS in nursing from Spalding University. Her husband’s father died when he was in his fifties, and her husband was having health issues. She wanted to have a way to support herself and her children, should anything happen to her husband. She did not actively work as a nurse following her degree, but she did serve as Indiana State President of the Medical Auxiliary Board.
Sources:
Curator notes from meeting with Allie Carey Reed, 2023.
United States census records, 1930, 1940, 1950 [ancestry.com]
National Park Service, “Cadet Nurse Corps” [https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cadet-nurse-corps.htm]
Scope and Content Note
This collection consists of the papers of Dr. Edsel Sherwood Reed (1923-2022) and Allie Carey Reed (1925-), dating from before and after their marriage in 1947 in Lexington, Kentucky, where they met working at Good Samaritan Hospital, he as a medical intern and she as a nursing student.
Folders 1-7, 17, and volume 18 consist of school notebooks and report cards, personal and military correspondence, and a scrapbook belonging to Edsel Sherwood Reed, who was called “Sherwood” as a child and young adult. The notebooks and report cards (folders 1-3) date from the 1930s-early 1940s, when Sherwood was attending school in Powell County, Kentucky, and Morehead State Teachers College. Correspondence from 1939-1953 (folders 4-6) and an oversized scrapbook from 1952-1954 (volume 18) pertain to Sherwood’s years as a student at Morehead and a medical student in the Army specialized training program at the University of Louisville during World War II, as well as his overseas tour at the Fort Clayton Army General Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. In 1953, Sherwood moved with Allie and their daughter Patricia to St. Joseph, Missouri, to begin private practice as a radiologist. Also of note is a Nichols Army General Hospital Thanksgiving program and book of rules and regulations from 1943 (folder 3), a family account book from 1948-1951 (folder 7), and miscellaneous loose papers (folder 17).
Folders 8-16 contain papers of Allie Carey Reed documenting her years at the Good Samaritan School of Nursing in the mid-1940s and her high school and nursing class reunions in 1989-2002. Dating from the 1940s are Good Samaritan School of Nursing newsletters, yearbook, and a booklet from 1948-1949 containing a staff list, images of nursing students’ residence and lounge, general regulations, and course descriptions (folders 8-9). Correspondence and ephemera from class reunions date from 1989 and 1993 (folders 9-10). Materials were removed from Allie Carey Reed’s magnetic page album scrapbook and foldered in their original order (folders 11-16). On the bottom front of the album was written “Good Sam – Class ’46 Reunion 9-9/10-89.” The contents include correspondence and ephemera from Marion High School (Indiana) class of 1942 reunions in 1997 and 2002 and from the Good Samarian class of 1946 reunions in 1989 and 1996; photographs of Good Samaritan staff and students from the 1940s; and graduation programs and newspaper clippings from the 1940s.
Related collections:
Allie Carey Reed museum collection [2023.22] and photograph collection [023PC35]
University of Louisville Medical Anatomy Class of 1944 photograph [GRI-67]
Reed-Carey genealogy materials in library collection [uncataloged as of September 2024]
Folder List
Box 1
Folder 1: Edsel Sherwood Reed school notebooks, ca. 1930s and undated
Folder 2: Edsel Sherwood Reed school notebooks, 1937-1938
Folder 3: Edsel Sherwood Reed report cards, programs, and ephemera, 1931-1944
Folder 4: Correspondence of Edsel Sherwood Reed, October 1939-September 1943, undated
Folder 5: Correspondence of Edsel Sherwood Reed, October-December 1943
Folder 6: Correspondence from Edsel Sherwood Reed to his parents, 1944-1953
Folder 7: Reed family account book and travel mementos, ca. 1940s-1950s, 2011
Folder 8: Good Samaritan Hospital nursing school publications, 1940s
Folder 9: Allie Carey Reed miscellaneous papers and correspondence, 1940s, 1993
Folder 10: Good Samaritan Hospital nursing school class of 1946 reunion, 1989
Folder 11: Allie Carey Reed scrapbook, disassembled (1 of 6), 1940s-2002
Folder 12: Allie Carey Reed scrapbook, disassembled (2 of 6), 1940s-2002
Folder 13: Allie Carey Reed scrapbook, disassembled (3 of 6), 1940s-2002
Folder 14: Allie Carey Reed scrapbook, disassembled (4 of 6), 1940s-2002
Folder 15: Allie Carey Reed scrapbook, disassembled (5 of 6), 1940s-2002
Folder 16: Allie Carey Reed scrapbook, disassembled (6 of 6), 1940s-2002
Folder 17: Loose papers removed from Edsel Sherwood Reed scrapbook, ca. 1954-1995
Oversized wrapped volume
Volume 18: Edsel Sherwood Reed scrapbook, 1952-1954
Subject Headings
Account books.
Carey family.
Class reunions.
Cumberland Falls State Park, Kentucky.
Estill County (Ky.)
Father’s Day.
Fort Clayton (Canal Zone)
Fort Hamilton (New York, N.Y.)
Good Samaritan Hospital (Lexington, Ky.)
Italy – Description and travel.
Marion High School (Indiana).
Medical students.
Military hospitals.
Morehead State Teachers College.
Mother’s Day.
Nichols General Hospital (Louisville, Ky.)
Nurses – Kentucky.
Nursing schools – Kentucky.
Nursing students – Kentucky.
Oneida (Ky.)
Palmer family.
Paris (France) – Description and travel.
Philadelphia (Pa.) – Description and travel.
Reed family.
Reed, Allie Carey, 1925-
Reed, Edsel Sherwood, 1923-2022.
Schools – Indiana
Schools – Kentucky – Powell County.
Students – Kentucky.
United States. Army.
United States. Cadet Nurse Corps.
University of Kentucky.
University of Louisville. School of Medicine.
World War, 1939-1945.
