Life and Death.

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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.”


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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