Right. Nothing definitively proves a family connection between Wyandotte Solomon and Quantrill Jim, thus my stew metaphor. And your analysis of the line of descent of Quantrill Raider Jim Reed mirrors mine. But your statement that there appears to be no Quantrill Jim Reed connection to Wyandotte Solomon Reed "other than he too had a Matthias" overlooks the fact that Wyandotte Solomon Reed not only also had a Matthias, just like Quantrill Jim Reed, he also had a Samuel, and a Jasper, and another third Solomon too.

That's a big steaming pile of connection. Nobody's saying the Solomon and the Samuel and the Jasper and the Matthias in Quantrill Jim's line are the same Solomon and Samuel and Jasper and Matthias in Wyandotte Solomon's line.

But...Genealogy 101: In pre-20th century America family Christian names tended to be passed down through parallel family lines, and are thus evidence of interrelatedness. Again, that's Genealogy 101. It's not proof. It's evidence. Evidence that can't be easily dismissed.

Here's more food for thought. Author/historian Larry Wood's attachment of the Anderson girls to Wyandotte Solomon Reed was a hypothesis based upon circumstantial evidence. Not on proof. So even if the connection is proven between Wyandotte Solomon and Quantrill Jim, it's still just mere evidence in regard to the larger original question we keep getting away from.

Which is what, as we get farther and farther out into the weeds with all this, it all comes back to: who was Bill Anderson's partner in his first 1862-1863 bushwhacking unit--William Reed or Jim Reed? And so far there is no proof--only circumstantial evidence. And in that regard there is no proof but there is a boatload of circumstantial evidence it was Jim Reed, who can be proven to have existed. And there is no proof, nor is there even any circumstantial evidence, that a border guerrilla named William Reed even existed, let alone played a prominent role in 1862-1863.