This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Reed/Reid Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/YeB.2ACI/279 Message Board Post: Can anyone tell me if there is a household in the 1840 census with a Mary Reid, age 60? She is in Bibb County Alabama by 1850 apparently with her grandchildren, Elizabeth, 22, Mary, 17 and John A., 15. John A. is my gg-grandfather. I am trying to determine if the parents of these children died sometime in the 1840s forcing them to move with their grandparents/grandmother to Alabama. Elizabeth was married to John Bracknell, a blacksmith from SC as early as 1847, so the grandmother and children may have moved with them to Alabama. The spelling of the name was changed to REED or possibly was misspelled as REID on the census. I think that John A. Reed's father's name could have been William since he named his first-born son that name. I'd appreciate any help from census/estate/land sale records.