Harry Fielding Reid - Legacy

Legacy

Reid’s son Francis Fielding earned an M.D. degree from the University of Maryland in 1930 but apparently did not practice medicine other than during his U.S. Army career. His daughter Doris Fielding eventually gave up pursuit of music and art to work as a bond trader on Wall Street and in the U.S. Government bond market in Washington, D.C.. She was life partner to the popular Classicist Edith Hamilton and together they raised the elder Reids' first grandchild, Francis Dorian Fielding. Harry Fielding Reid’s sister Ellen married the celebrated poet and preacher Henry van Dyke, who was the author of dozens of books, taught English at Princeton and served as U.S. Minister to the Netherlands during World War I. His younger brother Andrew Melville stayed in the family commodities business for some period of time but then established a second home and family in the south of France.

Reid died June 18, 1944. He and his brother Andrew, along with Edith Gittings Reid and her mother, are buried in Baltimore’s Greenmount Cemetery. Their markers are surrounded by the graves of various governors, mayors, Civil War generals and other representatives of the historic Baltimore elite. Reid continues to be recognized by geologists as one of their discipline’s founding fathers. Every year the Seismological Society of America recognizes a fellow scientist for having contributed that year’s finest work in seismology: their award is still named the Harry Fielding Reid Medal.