Stanley Forman Reed - Early Life

Early Life

Stanley Reed was born in the small town of Minerva in Mason County, Kentucky, on the last day of 1884 to John and Frances (Forman) Reed. His father was a wealthy physician and a Protestant who adhered to no particular organized church. The Reeds and Formans traced their history to the earliest colonial period in America, and these family heritages were impressed upon young Stanley at an early age.

Reed attended Kentucky Wesleyan College and received a B.A. degree in 1902. He then attended Yale University as an undergraduate, and obtained a second B.A. in 1906. He studied law at the University of Virginia (where he was a member of St. Elmo Hall) and Columbia University, but did not obtain a law degree. Reed married the former Winifred Elgin in May 1908. The couple had two sons, John A. and Stanley Jr., who both became attorneys. In 1909 he traveled to France and studied at the Sorbonne, where he obtained his auditeur bénévole.

After his studies in France, Reed returned to Kentucky. He was admitted to the bar in 1910 and established a legal practice in Maysville. He was elected to the Kentucky General Assembly in 1912 and served two two-year terms. After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Reed enlisted in the United States Army and was commissioned a lieutenant. When the war ended in 1918, Reed returned to his private law practice and became a well-known corporate attorney. He represented the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and the Kentucky Burley Tobacco Growers Association, among other large corporations. Stanley Reed was very active in the Sons of the American Revolution and Sons of Colonial Wars, while his wife was a national officer in the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Reeds settled on a farm near Maysville, where Stanley Reed raised prize-winning Holstein cattle in his spare time.