Groundsite Image Gallery
Mary and James Reed home site
Artist: Hughes, Langston
Height: 0.000"
Width: 0.000"
Marker, home site of James and Mary Reed, 731 New York St.
This stone marks the former residence of Langston Hughes’s grandmother’s friends, James and Mary Reed. Hughes’s grandmother Mary Langston would rent out her Alabama St. house and lodge temporarily with the Reeds.
In The Big Sea, Langston Hughes writes: Auntie Reed and her husband had a little house a block from the Kaw River near the railroad station (17). Local citizens still call the Kansas River the Kaw, an alternate spelling for the Siouan tribal name.
Hughes goes on to describe how the Reeds raised chickens and cows at this rural site near the edge of town. He remembers Auntie Reed’s cooking from the garden "peas and green onions" and fresh milk.