Hugh T. Reid

Hugh T. Reid, another early Lee County lawyer, was of Scotch-Irish extraction and a native of South Carolina. His grandfather, Hugh Reid, served as an American soldier in the Revolution, and entered a tract of land in the Northwest Territory, which he afterward gave to James Reid, the father of Hugh T. In 1833 Hugh T. Reid entered Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where he spent three years, and then graduated at the Indiana University, Bloomington. He studied law with James Perry of Liberty, Indiana, and was admitted to the bar in the spring of 1839. In June of that year he located at Fort Madison, and in the spring of 1840 formed a partnership with Edward Johnstone which lasted about ten years, much of which time was spent in defending his title to the half-breed tract, an account of which is given in another chapter. From 1840 to 1842 he served as prosecuting attorney for the district composed of Lee, Des Moines, Henry, Jefferson and Van Buren counties, and while in this position won a place in the front rank of attorneys. Mr. Reid was one of the lawyers who defended Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, when he was on trial at Carthage, Illinois, in 1844. While in command of the Fifteenth Iowa Infantry at Shiloh he received several wounds, one through the chest almost proving fatal. On April 13, 1863, he was made brigadier-general by President Lincoln, but resigned in April, 1864, to look after his private business. He took a prominent part in building the Des Moines Valley Railroad from Keokuk to Fort Dodge.

SOURCE: Nelson C. Roberts & S. W. Moorhead, editors, Story of Lee County, Iowa, Vol. 1, p. 302-3