* John and Roseanna were married Nov. 7, 1872 in Van Buren County. Her father Rev. John A. Knight performed the ceremony. She was 14 years-old. In those days it was not uncommon to marry this young. John Reed thought she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She had big brown eyes and long brown hair. She looked like she had a year-round tan. Of course her father was half Cherokee Indian. Roseanna had lost her mother when she was only two years old. She was raised by her elderly Cherokee grandmother, Penolope, or Penny.
My mother thought her grandmother, Roseanna, was about the best person she ever knew. Roseanna was blessed with a gentle kindness, a deep compassion for all of God’s creatures, and a genuine concern for all people. She was adored by her husband John and loved by everyone who knew her. Grand children would fight over the priviledge of spending time with her.
There is a story passed down several generations of an incident that happen with a cat. Roseanna was so tender-hearted that she cried when a young grandson, age 7 or 8 ,accidently killed her favorite Calico Cat by drowning it in the creek. It seems the boy thought it was fun to swing out over the creek on a grape vine and drop the cat in the Creek. After so many times or this the cat simply drowned. The cat had kittens. The boy felt so ashamed and sorry that he had hurt his grandmother he took the kittens home to care for them himself. Roseanna’s grandfather, husband of Penny, had died of drowning as a young man, so maybe that was the real reason she cried.
Roseanna loved to go to church. After her husband passed away, she would walk from her home to Pine Grove Church every Sunday. Later in life she was in the barn milking a cow when the cow knocked her down and stepped on her back. Her back was injured so severely, that she never recovered. She was sick for some time before she passed away. Roseanna and John had eleven children: Albert, Ellen, Nancy, Cora Ella, Martha Florence, James Jefferson, Elijah Edward, Manervia Roseanna, Sular Etta, Lena Jane, and an Infant who died at birth. Because of her children, her grandchildren, and this book, she will always be remembered. All of her children have died, and most of her grandchildren. Nevertheless, the great-grandchildren have passed on to their children stories of Roseanna Elizabeth Knight-Reed.
(book, Founding Families of Ida Arkansas by Erleene Fletcher, 1998)