Cassie Reaves was born in Carthage, Tennessee in about 1864 at the close of the Civil War. Cassie's maiden name and her parents’ names are unknown. The first definite record of Cassie is the 1880 census for Wright County, Missouri. The census indicates that Cassie had just married William Harvey Reaves, known as "Harvey," and the couple was living in Brush Creek Township, Wright County, Missouri. In the early 1890s, Harvey and Cassie moved to Everton, Dade County, where several of the Reaves children attended school and Harvey worked at the Everton plant of the Ash Grove White Lime Company. By 1901, the Reaves family was living near Ash Grove and Harvey was working at the company's Ash Grove plant. In 1911, Cassie purchased several adjacent lots on the west edge of Ash Grove, and Harvey and his older sons were working at the Ash Grove plant of the Ash Grove White Lime Company. By 1920, only Cassie and Harvey’s youngest son, Victor, still lived with them in their house, although several of their married children and grandchildren lived nearby. Harvey died in 1925 and Cassie remained in their Ash Grove home. In 1930, son Victor and grandson Leo were living with Cassie. By 1940, all of Cassie's sons and their families had dispersed to Greenfield and Joplin, Missouri, while grandson Leo remained with Cassie in Ash Grove. Cassie's daughter Effie (Reaves) Yokum, along with her husband and son, also remained in Ash Grove and lived just down the street from Cassie on one of the lots originally bought by Cassie in 1911. Cassie died on November 9, 1946, due (according to her death certificate) to complications from chromic nephritis. Cassie's death certificate states that she was buried three days later, on November 9th, in the "Berry Cem" (Russel 2012).
Grave Marker: Cassie Reaves' specific place of burial within the Berry Cemetery is unknown and there is no known individual headstone for her. However, Cassie is memorialized by the inscription of her name (shown below) on the monument, installed in 2017, for individuals interred in unmarked graves in the Berry Cemetery.
