Talk:Edward Reed (naval architect)

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Edward Reed (artist)

For the pin-up artist Edward Reed, click here. John Moore 309 16:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Railroad involvement

This is quite odd.

Hamilton Disston#Disston Land Purchase describes Reed buying two million acres of land in 1881; this article talks at some length about his involvement in Florida railroads. However, his entry in the ODNB doesn't mention anything about this, nor does Who Was Who, or his Times obituary.

In addition, it doesn't quite make sense - the sums of money included are staggeringly large, $600,000 being quoted for the land transaction - and Reed was not an excessively wealthy man. He was a middle-class engineer, albeit a respected one who rose very high in his profession, who died leaving an estate of nineteen thousand pounds. On the other hand, I can't find any sign of a different Sir Edward Reed who could be the financier named in these articles. Are they really the same man? If so, where did the money come from - and why have the historians failed to note these major financial dealings? Shimgray | talk | 17:18, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is the Google Books version of the cited source, and it seems explicit it's the same man. This is very strange indeed... Shimgray | talk | 17:29, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've tracked down a couple of articles in the Times which confirm his involvement in the land purchase, though it seems the Diston article slightly misrepresents it - "Reed, representing an English syndicate interested in colonisation, has bought ... The syndicate is constructing a railroad from Fernandina to Cedar Keys." (22/12/81) ; "an English syndicate interested in building railways in Florida, headed by Sir Edward J. Reed" (21/5/83) ; "the Florida Land and Mortgage Company of England, of which the Earl of Huntingdon is chairman and Sir Edward Reed and Captain Gambier, RN, are prominent directors" (15/4/84). So he may not have been the purchaser himself, merely a director of the company involved, and likewise for the railroads - still, it's a strange question as to why the biographers missed it! Shimgray | talk | 17:43, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]