James "J" Sewall Reed (1832-1864) is best remembered as an organizer of a few hundred Californians who fought in the eastern battlefields of the American Civil War as part of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry while most soldiers from California were assigned to Union Army outposts west of the Mississippi River.

James returned to San Francisco with his bride in September, 1859; and their son Walter Sewall Reed was born there on 25 January 1861.

The Dragoons' patrols of the Central Overland Route seemed unexciting in comparison to the newspaper accounts of civil war battles in the east.

In the fall of 1862, a group of Californians from the northeastern United States approached Massachusetts governor John Albion Andrew proposing to supply a company of 100 cavalry volunteers.

After traveling across the isthmus of Panama and arriving in New York aboard the Ocean Queen,[2] the California Hundred were designated company A of the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry commanded by Colonel Charles Russell Lowell.