The aging process is no fun. That has probably been the case throughout the history of our species. With each passing year I feel new aches and pains, have to get new spectacles with regularity, and even more distressing, I attend more funerals of my contemporaries. I am reluctant to complain too much because compared to our ancestors, growing old is so much easier today--at least for those who have the resources to pay for those new specs or afford a hip replacement.
Documenting the longevity of humans prior to written history is a challenge. It is believed by anthropologists that many if not most humans did not live past 30 years until about 30,000 years ago--a short time in the great scheme of things. Few of these people would have known their grandparents.
Most of the increase in human longevity has come in the last 150 years as progress has been made in public sanitation, an understanding of the causes of infections, and treatment advances. The decline of infant mortality during the past century has dramatically impacted longevity. Average life expectancy in the U.S. today is 79 years, which ranks 53rd in the world.
A surprising number of Arkansans have lived 100 years or more. Among my favorite centenarians was William Ford of Sulphur Township in Pope County near Atkins. Ford was born in Tennessee in 1798, and although I could not find his death date, he appears in the 1910 U.S. Census and is described in an Arkansas Gazette article on June 30, 1911. That means he lived in three centuries!
The Gazette reported that Ford recalled "the news of the battle of New Orleans [in 1815]. He voted for Andrew Jackson for president and he never missed voting in a presidential election since."
Ford and his first wife had no children, but they adopted and reared seven orphans. He had seven children by his second wife and they reared two more orphans. He and his third wife had four children and made room for two more orphans. That is a total of 11 natural children and 11 adopted ones.
Peter Mankins Sr. of Washington County lived to see 111 years. Born in Maryland in 1770, Mankins did not die until 1881. I was skeptical about this super-centenarian lifespan. However, much evidence survives to document his long life. For example, in December 1870 the Fayetteville Democrat ran an article about Mankins' 100th birthday dinner. (Amazingly, over 700 pounds of beef, mutton, and pork were barbecued for the party. So many of Mankins' chickens were cooked that the reporter said the poultry "fared as badly as if there had been a Methodist conference"--a humorous reference to the stereotype of Methodist preachers being exceedingly fond of free chicken dinners.)
Not all older Arkansans fared as well as William Ford and Peter Mankins. There were no safety nets to provide for the needy elderly, which meant that many older people who could not care for themselves ended up in the dreaded "poor farm." As you might expect, being committed to a poor farm carried a heavy social stigma.
In July 1910 a Berryville newspaper reported that "John and Bedia Borem, an aged couple living up in Osage township, were brought here Wednesday, adjudged by the county judge [to be] irresponsible and unable to take care of themselves and [were] sent to the poor farm for care." The editor reported that neighbors had been looking after the old couple "for several years," and many in the neighborhood were opposed to sending them to the poor farm. Not surprisingly, "the old people themselves are very indignant over their predicament."
White Arkansans often stereotyped black Arkansans as unusually long-lived. Local newspapers regularly reported on ancient black residents--or at least perceived to be ancient. On Nov. 2, 1900, the Arkansas Democrat reported from Pine Bluff that "'Aunt Violet' Woods, said to have been the oldest resident of this section of the country" died near New Gascony. She was believed to be over 100 years of age. As a young enslaved woman, Aunt Violet had been a servant in the household of Arkansas' first governor after statehood, James S. Conway. At the time of her death, she was reported to have 59 grandchildren and over 70 great-grandchildren.
The oldest individual in Arkansas history as far as I can determine from limited sources was Mrs. Gertrude Gaines Weaver of Camden, who died in 2015 at the age of 116 years. Mrs. Weaver, a black woman who had been born to sharecroppers in Lafayette County, became the oldest documented person in the world on March 31, 2015, when Mrs. Misao Okawa of Japan died. Mrs. Weaver held the title for seven days before her death.
According to online sources, at the time of her death Mrs. Weaver was the seventh-oldest person ever verified in the world and the third oldest verified in the United States. She was survived by a son who turned 94 the day after the death of his mother.
Mrs. Weaver was lucid and more or less mobile until her death at age 116 years and 276 days. When asked not long before her death about the secret of her longevity, Mrs. Weaver replied: "Use a lot of skin moisturizer, treat everyone nice, love your neighbor, and eat your own cooking. Don't eat at fast food places."
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist growing old near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 09/03/2017