Helen Leah Reed was born in
St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, Her parents were Dr. Guilford Shaw and Ella (Berryman) Reed. Her father was born at
Wilmot, Nova Scotia, and died at
Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1908. He was the son of Granville Bevil and Leah (Green) Reed of
Nova Scotia. He was of
New England ancestry, and his Reed forbears, who were
Loyalists, had migrated to Nova Scotia in the epoch of the Revolution. Helen traced her ancestry also to Roger Williams and to the Greene family of
Rhode Island and other
Colonial families. Her mother was the daughter of John Berryman of St. John, granddaughter of John and Catharine (Edgar) Berryman of England, and the great-granddaughter of Peter and Elizabeth (Annesley) Wade of
New York, who were Loyalists. Helen's parents came to
Boston in 1865. Helen's siblings were: Ethel, Arthur, Edwin, Harry, John, and Catharine. Reed studied at
Radcliffe College in its early days and was admitted there to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1890, from which she graduated. She was a student of Latin and Greek, and in 1890, was the first woman to win the Sargent Prize, offered by
Harvard University for a
metrical translation from
Horace, which version was published in ''
Scribner's Magazine''. ==Career==