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Transcribed from "An Illustrated History of The Big Bend Country, embracing
Lincoln, Douglas, Adams and Franklin counties, State of Washington",
published by Western Historical Publishing Co., 1904.
WALTER C. REEDER. Foremost
among the enterprising and prominent young business men of Ritzville is
Walter C. Reeder, a native of Woodford county, Illinois, born October 31,
1863. Although born in Illinois Mr. Reeder may be classed as a thorough
westerner, for he was a lad of only ten years when his parents, Daniel
A. and Eliza K. (Crosley) Reeder, migrated with their family to Linn county,
Oregon. Five years later they removed to Umatilla county, where the
boy attended the graded schools of Weston and Athena. In the fall
of 1886 Walter C. left the family home and came to Adams county where he
filed on a homestead and purchased a section of railroad land eighteen
miles south of Ritzville. He tilled the soil until the fall of 1899,
when he rented his land, came to Ritzville and purchased from O. R. Haight
that gentleman's harness and furniture business and his one-story brick
business building. In the spring of 1901 he purchased the adjoining
lot upon which he built an addition to his store, giving him a double building
fifty feet by ninety feet,--one side devoted to harness, saddlery, and
so forth, while the other is taken up with furniture. He carries
a combined stock of about ten thousand dollars, and employs continuously
two harness makers, besides his necessary clerks and salesmen.
In addition to the property interests already
enumerated, Mr. Reeder owns twelve hundred acres of land in Douglas county
near Quincy, also eighteen hundred acres of land eighteen miles south from
Ritzville which is well improved and all in a high state of cultivation.
He has recently purchased a beautiful and palatial residence at the corner
of Boone and Lenox streets in Spokane, which cost six thousand dollars.
Mr. Reeder is also heavily interested in various mining properties in Washington,
Idaho and British Columbia.
Mr. Reeder's father was a native of Pennsylvania,
coming of an old Pennsylvania Dutch family of farmers, and died in 1892;
while his mother, descending from an old American family of many generations,
was born in Ohio, and now lives at Tacoma. He has three brothers
and two sisters, William H., Levi B., Joseph E., Rhoda E., wife of John
K. Bott, and Flora E., wife of Charles M. Ely.
Walter C. Reeder was married to Anna L. Whitaker,
a native of Michigan, at Athena, Oregon, February 7, 1886; and to them
have been born four children, two of whom are living. They are; W.
Ceryl and A. Loy, aged respectively, seven and four; Lela D., died September
11, 1898, aged nine years and eleven months; and Vera May, died May 12,
1895, aged four months. Mrs. Reeder's parents were James B. and Ann
(Davis) Whitaker, the former a native of Hartford, Connecticut, and the
latter of New York state. The father was born in 1830 and died in
1900, while the mother was born in 1835, and is now living at College Place,
Washington. Mrs. Reeder has two brothers and one sister, Ceryl J.,
Giles H. and Ada A.
Mr. and Mrs. Reeder are devoted members of
the Christian church, and Mr. Reeder is a member of the Good Templars,
Masonic, Maccabees, Workmen and Woodmen of the World fraternities, in each
of which he is a man of influence and distinction. Mr. and Mrs. Reeder
are favorites in society and are the center of an extended circle of admiring
friends.
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