Above we see Horace Greeley Reese, Sr. (1876-1954). I would bet a dollar that Horace was named after Horace Greeley (1811-1872) who was the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, a member of the U. S. House of Representatives, and a presidential candidate of the Liberal Republican Party who lost to Ulysses S. Grant in a landslide in 1872. The caption on the back of the photograph says it was taken while he was in college. Horace attended Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) where he won the freshman class gold medal in 1896 and graduated in the class of 1899.

Horace was the son of David Reese (1825-1895) and Sarah C. Burns (1844-1899). He grew up on farm on what is now Meadow Branch Road southwest of Westminster, MD. The Reese farm was surrounded by the farms of family members, part of a large parcel of land passed down through the family of his paternal grandmother Rebecca Roop (1803-1872) who married Andrew Reese (1791-1826) in 1822.

Horace began working at the Westminster Post Office while still in college. By 1902 he had risen to the position of chief clerk under postmaster Milton Schaeffer (1853-1902), a former Republican mayor of Westminster and a prominent Carroll County businessman who had been appointed in 1898. Under Schaeffer’s supervision, in 1899 Carroll County became the first county in the U. S. to completely implement Rural Free Delivery and Horace participated in the first run in April.

Schaeffer died in September 1902 and Horace was appointed acting postmaster to serve out the remainder of Schaeffer’s term, but he was eventually passed over for the permanent job. Horace married Schaeffer’s oldest daughter, Edna Eugenia Schaeffer (1879-1954), on 31 December 1902. Edna’s mother was Mary Susan Zacharias (1857-1943). Horace resigned from the Westminster post office in September 1904 and took a job in Memphis working for the U. S. Post Office’s Rural Free Delivery Southern Division. He went on to become a mail inspector and to work all over the South. Horace was credited with capturing a number of crooks and fraudsters who used the postal service to carry out their crimes.

Horace and Edna had four children, Horace Greeley Reese, Jr. (1906-1979), Kathleen Diehl Reese (1915-1991), Mary Elizabeth Reese (1918-2006), and Milton Schaeffer Reese (1920-1992). The couple retired in Florida at the end of Horace’s 45-year career, died within months of each other, and were buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in St. Petersburg, FL.

Above we see Mary Ann Reese (1832-1922). She was a daughter of Andrew Reese (1800-1884) and Hannah Leister (1802-1888), the last survivor of their nine children. I think she was related to Horrace primarily because they shared the same great-grandfather, Andrew Reese (1709-1794). She married Jeremiah Rinehart (1821-1897) in August 1882 after his first wife, Mary A. Maus (1822-1882), died in May of that year.

Both of these photographs were produced by Sereck Shallcross Wilson (1870-1943). Serick was born in Middletown, DE. He moved to Westminster in 1901 and operated a studio there from 1902-1910 and 1920-1932. Between 1910 and 1920 he worked in Washington and Baltimore. These dates cause me to question the “in college” note on the back of Horace’s photograph but it is a discrepancy which could be easily explained. Sereck’s wife was Mary Gertrude Weaver (1880-1971) who happened to be a granddaughter of Jeremiah Rinehart.

These photographs were bought at an antique store on The Avenue in Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore.