Louisa A. Walker was born around 1842 in the Iowa Territory to Samuel and Sarah Walker. Her father was a farmer who owned $3,000 of real estate and $1,494 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in Round Prairie, Iowa, until the 1850s, when they moved to Pleasant, Iowa. She married Enos Reed on April 2, 1862, and they had at least seven children: Olive, born around 1863; Alice, born around 1868; Almeda, born around 1870; Scott, born around 1873; Ida, born around 1876; Alma, born around 1880; and David, born around 1884.
Her husband served in the Union army from 1862 until 1862. She supported the Republican Party, and she urged her husband to "labor day and night" for gubernatorial candidate William M. Stone in the election of 1863. She added that she "wish[ed] that I could vote for him." They moved to Liberty, Kansas, around 1866, and her husband worked as a farmer there. By 1870, they owned $4,000 of real estate and $600 of personal property. They moved to Palmyra, Kansas, in the 1870s. They remained there until at least 1910. She died in 1911.