The Walter Reed Birthplace, subject of preservation efforts since 1926, is now owned by the Gloucester Preservation Foundation. A transfer of the cottage and small parcel to the foundation, a nonprofit corporation, was made from Preservation Virginia on May 23.

John Gillis, chairman of the Gloucester Preservation Foundation, explained that Preservation Virginia, long known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, obtained the cottage in 1968 from the Medical Society of Virginia, which acquired it in 1926 and restored it the next year.

For years the birthplace of the famous physician was under the stewardship of the Joseph Bryan Branch of APVA; Gillis, who is also director of that group, said the branch is no longer active.

Walter Reed, medical hero who discovered that mosquitoes transmit yellow fever, was born at the cottage in 1851. His father, the Rev. Lemuel Reed, was a Methodist minister serving at nearby Bellamy Methodist Church.

The family later ...