Postscript
The real Benjamin Reed died in 1837 and was buried in Hazel Valley, Arkansas. He'd lived his seventy-seven years in three distinct places that still bear the family name: Along Reed Creek near Tazewell, Virginia; At the Reed Branch of Johnson Fort at Cow Creek, Magoffin County, Kentucky; And in Reed Township in Washington County, Arkansas. Benjamin married a Charity Vaughn on December 17, 1792 in Warren County, North Carolina. He obtained land grants for sixty acres in Tazewell, Russell County, Virginia in 1805 and for three-hundred acres in Morgan County, Kentucky (now Magoffin County) in 1824. There the couple raised their children in the Cow Creek community on the Johnson Fork of the Licking River. This is the extent of the definitive record for my great-great-great-grandfather. Reed family oral tradition adds that Benjamin had fought in the revolutionary war Battle of King's Mountain, tho...