122 YEARS.--The great-grandfather of the dramatist Steele Mackaye,
named John Morrison, was an old Covenanter and preached in the same
parish a hundred years. He lived to be 122. His name, written in the
old Bible after he was a centenarian, looks like a copperplate.
154 YEARS.--The Cincinnati _Evening Telegram_ recently published a
special from San Antonio, Tex., which says: News has just reached
here, from a most reliable source, of the recent death in the State of
Vera Cruz, Mex., of Jesus Valdonado, a farmer and ranchman of
considerable possessions. This man's age at the time of death was
indisputably 154 years. At Valdonado's funeral the pall-bearers were
his three sons, aged respectively 140, 120, and 109 years. They were
white-haired, but strong and hearty, and in full possession of all
their faculties.
AMERICUS, Ga., Sept. 25.--Edmond Montgomery died on Nick Jordan's
place, near the county line of Schley, aged 102 years. He was an
African chief of the Askari tribe, and was taken to Virginia from
Africa in 1807, when he was a young man. He had a large family in
Virginia, and when he died he left his third wife and 25 children in
Georgia. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren are unknown and
unnumbered. He had remarkably good eyesight and health, and never took
a dose of medicine in his life.
THIRTY-THREE CHILDREN.--A West Virginian named Brown recently visited
Washington to furnish evidence in a pension claim. Inquiry showed that
his mother had borne thirty-three children in all. Twenty of this
number were boys, sixteen of whom had served in the Union army. Two
were killed. The others survived. The death of the two boys entitles
the mother to a pension. General Black says the files of the office
fail to show another record where the sixteen sons of one father and
mother served as soldiers in the late war.
EFFECT OF POVERTY.--"M. Delerme, a distinguished Parisian physician,
found that in France the death rate of persons between the ages of
forty and forty-five, when in easy circumstances, was only 8.3 per one
thousand per annum, while the poorer classes of similar age died at
the rate of 18.7. That was two and one-half times as many of the poor
as the rich died in France at these ages out of a given number
living."
JENNY LIND GOLDSCHMIDT, the famous Swedish singer, died at London Nov.
1st at the age of 69. She was born of poor parents and made her first
appearance on the stage at nine years of age.
"MRS. RACHEL STILLWAGON, of Flushing, claims to be the oldest woman on
Long Island. She has just celebrated her 102d birthday, surrounded by
descendants to even the fifth generation. Three-quarters of a century
ago the fame of Mrs. Stillwagon's beauty extended as far south as
Baltimore."