Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Reed, Julius A.
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
(1809-1890)
History
Julius Reed was one of the first Congregational ministers to venture into Iowa and was instrumental in establishing Congregational Churches in the state, and for five years, serving as treasurer and principal of Iowa College. Reed was born in 1809 in East Windsor Hill, Connecticut. He attended Yale College, graduating in 1829, and after teaching for a few years, returned to Yale Divinity School where he received his degree in 1835. That same year he married Caroline Blood and was commissioned by the American Home Missionary Society to go west. Reed settled first in Illinois, where he was ordained in 1836, and served churches in Montebello, Nauvoo, Carthage, and Warsaw. He made several trips into Iowa and helped organize the Denmark Church in May of 1838. In 1840, Reed received a call to Fairfield, Iowa, where he settled for the next five years. During that time, he assisted with the organization of the State Association of Congregationalists on Nov. 5-6, 1840. In 1845, Reed became the agent of the American Home Missionary Society and moved to Davenport. He resigned that position in 1858 to become treasurer of Iowa College. When the college moved to Grinnell in 1860, he moved with it and served as Principal of the Preparatory Department, and Acting Professor of Mathematics and well as Treasurer. In 1862, he resigned from the college and returned to Davenport to serve again as agent of the American Home Missionary Society. Ill health caused him to resign in 1869. He lived for the next decade in Columbus, Nebraska but returned with his wife to Davenport in 1880 to live with his daughter until his death on August 27, 1890.