Amanda Reed portrait photograph, 1885.
mplifying her husband’s wishes, Amanda Reed specified in her will that their estate be used to establish an institute of learning. Following her death in Pasadena on May 16, 1904, her will set up a trust and named five trustees, to be led by Thomas Lamb Eliot and aided by her nephew Martin Winch, to establish the Reed Institute to create such an institution with no limits other than an insistence on equality and freedom from sectarian influence. The institute was to pursue “…the increase and diffusion of practical knowledge…and for the promotion of literature, science and arts.” The will was contested by relatives for four years.
Reed in 1904
