William H. Reid, 26th USCI, White Ridge Cemetery, Eatontown, New Jersey

WILLIAM H. REID, 26th USCI, WHITE RIDGE CEMETERY

William H. Reid was born a free man at Summerton, Virginia, on February 28, 1840.  At the oubreak of the Civil War, Reid was conscripted by the Confederacy, becoming part of the Souths Black manpower base that Frederick Douglass often cited as a basis of Southern strength and a rationale for Union recruitment of African Americans.

When a Union Army under General Ambrose Burnside captured the town of New Bern, North Carolina, on March 14, 1862, Reid, who was apparently working on fortifications in the area, took the opportunity to leave the South and move north.  For almost two years, he worked as a sailor on coastal vessels.  He may have been a resident of New Jersey during this period.

After his discharge, William Reid chose not to return to his native Virginia, and moved to Red Bank, New Jersey, where he bought a house on Mechanic Street and married local girl Hannah Van Breedkle.  The couple had 12 children.

Reid, who was more prepared than most, made his own coffin of choice walnut at an Eatontown, New Jersey, funeral home in 1913, and then dug his own grave at White Ridge Cemetery there.  A fastidious craftsman, Reid lined the grave with brick and placed a concrete slab over it.  The old veteran made these meticulous preparations for his passing because he did not want to bother or make trouble for anyone after he was dead.  Reid, no doubt one of the last survivors of his regiment, succumbed, apparently of a stroke, in January 1927, and was laid to rest in White Ridge, where he remains to this day.

SOURCE:  J. G. BILBY, 1993