Emily Smith
Nettleton, Real Daughter
Each member of the Martha Washington Chapter
NSDAR of Sioux City, Iowa, takes great pride
in the fact that the name of a ‘Real Daughter’
stands upon the chapter records.
Emily S. Reed was the daughter of Justus and
Lydia Burnham Reed, who were married August 7,
1816. Justus was the son of Ebenezer and Mary
Reed, born February 15, 1760 in East Windsor,
Connecticut. Ebenezer enlisted in the army in
1777, but because of severe illness in the
family, his son, Justus, then but 17, took his
father’s place, enlisting from East Windsor.
He was a private in Captain Grant’s command
under Washington, and in New York doing guard
duty when the British landed there; he
continued under Washington until the surrender
of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, October
19, 1781, and with others stood guard around
Cornwallis after the surrender. He was a
faithful soldier and endured many privations
and hardships there before he reached his home
in Connecticut.
Emily was the child of her father’s old age,
his ninth child, and the only one by his third
wife. Justus died October 10, 1846, in
Manchester, Connecticut, aged 86 years. The
subject of this sketch, Emily Reed, was born
in East Windsor, Connecticut, on January 15,
1818. When she was about three years old the
family moved to Torringford, Connecticut. It
was here she spent her childhood, and it was
here she obtained her education. In young
womanhood she went to Bristol, Connecticut,
and learned to paint pictures on glass, such
as in the olden time were found in the lower
half of the doors of clocks. Her paintings
proved quite a success.
Her next home was in Waterbury, Connecticut,
where she worked in a covered button factory,
and while there was married to Chandler Judd
Nettleton on March 22, 1840. The ceremony took
place in a Methodist Church by a Methodist
minister. In a few weeks the young couple went
to live in a hotel in Stanford, Connecticut.
She very soon came down with smallpox, having
taking it from a boarder in the house; and now
her hard life began. Within a year they moved
to Patchogue, Long Island, New York, again
into a hotel. While here, both of her children
were born, her son, Edgar Merwin, on May 6,
1842, and a daughter, Ella Madaline, came to
her on July 18, 1844. When the baby was less
than a year old, her husband took his family
to Manchester, Connecticut, to the home of his
wife’s father, who was then a very old man.
Mrs. Nettleton never saw her husband again,
while the shock caused by his daughter’s being
deserted hastened her father’s death, which
came very soon. She never complained, but for
sixteen years supported her mother and her
children by working in a factory. Her daughter
died at 13, so after her mother’s death, she
had but her son.
Mrs. Nettleton lived in her native state
for many years, part of the time with a
distant relative, but her son having married
and wandered west, she came to Sioux City to
be with him in 1892. Here she spent the last
years of her long life in a little brown
cottage surrounded by golden glow, holly
hocks, and roses in summer, and by
snow-covered hills in winter. She always
gave her callers a smiling welcome and she
always expected the DAR ladies on her
birthday. Many were her callers on that day,
and many were the thoughtful tokens left on
her table. When asked if she remembered any
of her father’s anecdotes of the way, she
smiling said, “It was a long time ago and I
was very young but I remember he told this
one oftenest, that when guarding Cornwallis
with a loaded musket he was told to shoot to
kill if his prisoner tried to escape.”
Mrs. Nettleton joined the National Society
of the Daughters of the American Revolution,
May 6, 1898. She was a member of the Martha
Washington Chapter, NSDAR. In an old chest
of drawers just back of where she always sat
lay the golden spoon in its red silken case,
which is the gift of the National Society of
the Daughters of the American Revolution to
all ‘Real Daughters.’ Not until she was
almost ninety could she be persuaded to take
a nap in the daytime, "because it was a bad
habit," but after she began it, she enjoyed
it. On the 9th of May 1909, the
gates of Heaven stood ajar, and ere the
morning brightness had enveloped the
beautiful hillsides, the gentle spirit of
Emily Nettleton passed out of its earthly
home into the promised hereafter. Her
bright, painless, peaceful face seemed a
benediction for her faithful son. Loving
hands cared for her last needs; a Methodist
minister administered the last rites. She
was given a tender burial upon a beautiful
hillside where the Martha Washington
Chapter, NSDAR, has placed a granite stone
which will ever mark the resting place of a
noble, faithful woman.
This
lineage information is anecdotal in nature
and can not be used as fact or for proof
for membership in the Daughters of the
American Revolution.
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