Biographical Details
Date of Birth: 1830
Birth Location: Champaign County, OH, USA
Major Study: Law
Graduation Year(s): 1850
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelor of Laws
Date of Death: December 31, 1862
Death Location: Stones River, TN, USA
Sheridan Pitt Read
Life Experience
Sheridan Pitt Read was born the seventh of ten children. His eldest and youngest sibling were thirty-five years apart in age. The children all had the same father, but they had different mothers. The family resided in Paris, Illinois.
Read graduated from IU in 1850 with a law degree. When the Civil War broke out, he enlisted, along with four of his brothers. He served as colonel of the 79th Illinois Infantry. He was killed at the Battle of Stones in River, Tennessee, on New Year’s Eve 1862. His brother, Abner, was killed in 1863, but his other three brothers survived the war.
Marriage and Family
Read married Olivia Flynn Smith in July 1859. They had a daughter and son. Read’s widow remarried in 1868, but she had no more children. His daughter, Lois, and son and namesake, Sheridan Pitt Read, Jr., kept Read’s last name. His daughter died in 1959. His granddaughter, Olivia, lived to age one hundred (1999).
Interesting Anecdote
Wilmot Rhodes, great-grandson of Read’s brother, Amasa, worked with U.S. Special Projects and helped develop the presidential aircraft known as Air Force One. Some of Rhodes’s work is on permanent display at the Smithsonian Museum.
References
- Wylie
- Findagrave.com
- Indiana University (1875)
- The National Tribune 04/05/1888