Lodusky Eldora FARRAR (Nathaniel James-1) was born on April 6, 1857 in Bull Mountain Creek, Itawamba County, Mississippi. She died on March 29, 1956 in Itawamba County, Mississippi. She was buried in Union Grove Cemetery, Tilden, Itawamba County, Mississippi.

MEMORIES STILL MANY AND KEEN FOR 98- YEAR-OLD MOTHER OF DE. REED, By Edith Haynie

Fulton-The tiny little lady sat there in a favorite rocker by the window with the sun laying gentle golden fingers of light across her gray hair. In her hands was a nearly two-hundred-year old bible almost as big as she. She rocked slightly back and forth.

"You live a hundred years," she mused, "And you've got something to think about. I can just sit up here and think of things that are unbelievable now" her voice trailed away.

Mrs. M.L. Reed, "I was Lodusky Eldora Farrar", is 98, going on 99." She is the widow of an old-fashioned country doctor who practiced medicine for 55 years in Itawamba County in Tilden community.

"A doctor's wife leads a mighty hard life," Mrs. Reed said thoughtfully. "But if I had it to do over again and my husband was a doctor, I'd do it again."

"I was born eight miles south of Fulton on Bull Mountain Creek," she remembered. "I was born out in the country and always lived there until my husband died and I moved to Fulton 18 years ago." Mrs. Reed is the last of her family although she had two sisters who lived to be 97 and 93. "I was the baby", she remarked brightly.

She is the mother of eight children, three of whom are dead. Her sons are Dr. W.N. Reed of Amory, R.W. Reed, Rex Reed and A.K. Reed, all of Tupelo; and a daughter Mrs. C.C. Harrison, with whom she lives in Fulton.

"Oh, I always enjoyed tending to my children," she said emphatically. " I never would have a nurse on the place because I wanted to do for them myself."

Until she began to lose her sight a few years ago, Mrs. Reed was an ardent reader of the Bible (she owns two family Bibles well over 200 years old) and she did an enormous amount of crocheting and knitting. During World War II, she knitted 18 sweaters and countless socks for soldiers.

"I used to knit for my children when they were growing up," she said. "And when the white wool would get dingy, I would get walnut bark, boil it down, and dye their socks black."

Mrs. Harrison pointed to an exquisite crocheted bedspread and said that her mother made it before she began to go blind.

"I did love to piece on quilts," Mrs. Reed continued. "I'd get my scraps down and put me up a quilt every Spring when I was living at home. Then neighbor women would come in and help quilt it. Oh, I've got quilts out there in my chest my father made now, that came from Tennessee before I was born."
The chest to which she refers was made from cedar by her father long before Mr. Reed was born and was brought to Itawamba County when the Farrars came here, as one of the genuine pioneer families of the county.

She recalls her mother telling her as a small girl about the early days when the family used the chest as a table until her father could make a table. Mr. Reed owns many pricless family heirlooms. This chest is one, still in good condition. Another of her favorites is a huge platter given to her mother when her mother was a young woman. The dish must be more than two hundred years old, and some of Mrs. Reed's brightest memories are connected with it.

"My mother gave it to me when I married," she said, and the listener could see the scenes she described as vividly as if they were yesterday. "Back during the war, that old war, you know, the one between the States; everybody was poor then. That dish was the only one in the country big enough to hold a turkey or a whole ham. Why, that dish has been to more log-rollings and different gatherings than you can count. And it never even was cracked."

"I used to do a lot of things before I lost my sight." she muses, fingering the big old Bible she can no longer see. "And I've got a lot to remember."

She hasn't been back to the old home place at Tilden for a long time. But this doesn't matter, for Mrs. Reed is blessed with a memory as clear and alive as it was when all her beloved memories were happening.

And memory is one thing that age cannot destroy for Mrs. Reed. For her, it is precious and complete.

This article was printed in the Tupelo, (MS.) Daily Journal in 1956.