Martin mentions a man of one hundred and eighty. There was a Polish peasant who reached one hundred and fifty-seven and had constantly labored up to his one hundred and forty-fifth year, always clad lightly, even in cold weather. Voigt admits the extreme age of one hundred and sixty.
There was a woman living in Moscow in 1848 who was said to be one hundred and sixty-eight; she had been married five times and was one hundred and twenty-one at her last wedding. D'Azara records the age of one hundred and eighty, and Roequefort speaks of two cases at one hundred and fifty.
There are stories of an Englishman who lived in the sixteenth century to be two hundred and seven, and there is a parallel case cited.
Van Owen tabulates 331 cases of deaths between 110 and 120, 91between 120 and 130, 37 between 130 and 140, 11 at 150, and 17beyond this age. While not vouching for the authenticity in each case, he has always given the sources of information.
Quite celebrated in English history by Raleigh and Bacon was the venerable Countess Desmond, who appeared at Court in 1614, being one hundred and forty years old and in full possession of all her powers, mental and physical. There are several portraits of her at this advanced age still to be seen. Lord Bacon also mentions a man named Marcus Appenius, living in Rimini, who was registered by a Vespasian tax-collector as being one hundred and fifty.
There are records of Russians who have lived to one hundred and twenty-five, one hundred and thirty, one hundred and thirty-five, one hundred and forty-five, and one hundred and fifty. Nemnich speaks of Thomas Newman living in Bridlington at one hundred and fifty-three years. Nemnich is confirmed in his account of Thomas Newman by his tombstone in Yorkshire, dated 1542.
In the chancel of the Honington Church, Wiltshire, is a black marble monument to the memory of G. Stanley, gent., who died in 1719, aged one hundred and fifty-one.
There was a Dane named Draakenburg, born in 1623, who until his ninety-first year served as a seaman in the royal navy, and had spent fifteen years of his life in Turkey as a slave in the greatest misery. He was married at one hundred and ten to a woman of sixty, but outlived her a long time, in his one hundred and thirtieth year he again fell in love with a young country girl, who, as may well be supposed, rejected him. He died in 1772 in his one hundred and forty-sixth year. Jean Effingham died in Cornwall in 1757 in his one hundred and forty-fourth year. He was born in the reign of James I and was a soldier at the battle of Hochstadt; he never drank strong liquors and rarely ate meat;eight days before his death he walked three miles.
Bridget Devine, the well-known inhabitant of Olean Street, Manchester died at the age of one hundred and forty-seven in 1845. On the register of the Cheshire Parish is a record of the death of Thomas Hough of Frodsam in 1591 at the age of one hundred and forty-one.
Peter Garden of Auchterless died in 1775 at the age of one hundred and thirty-one. He had seen and talked with Henry Jenkins about the battle of Flodden Field, at which the latter was present when a boy of twelve. It seems almost incredible that a man could say that he had heard the story of an event which had happened two hundred and sixty-three years before related by the lips of an eye-witness to that event; nevertheless, in this case it was true. A remarkable instance of longevity in one family has recently been published in the St. Thomas's Hospital Gazette.
Mrs. B., born in 1630 (five years after the accession of Charles I), died March 13, 1732. She was tended in her last illness by her great-granddaughter, Miss Jane C., born 1718, died 1807, and Miss Sarah C., born 1725, died 1811. A great-niece of one of these two ladies, Mrs. W., who remembers one of them, was born in 1803, and is at the present time alive and well. It will be seen from the above facts that there are three lives only to bridge over the long period between 1630 and 1896, and that there is at present living a lady who personally knew Miss C., who had nursed a relative born in 1630. The last lady of this remarkable trio is hale and hearty, and has just successfully undergone an operation for cataract. Similar to the case of the centenarian who had seen Henry Jenkins was that of James Horrocks, who was born in 1744and died in 1844. His father was born in 1657, one year before the death of the Protector, and had issue in early life. He married again at eighty-four to a woman of twenty-six, of which marriage James was the offspring in 1744. In 1844 this man could with verity say that he had a brother born during the reign of Charles II, and that his father was a citizen of the Commonwealth.
Among the Mission Indians of Southern California there are reported instances of longevity ranging from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty. Lieutenant Gibbons found in a village in Peru one hundred inhabitants who were past the century mark, and another credible explorer in the same territory records a case of longevity of one hundred and forty. This man was very temperate and always ate his food cold, partaking of meat only in the middle of the day. In the year of 1840 in the town of Banos, Ecuador, died "Old Morales," a carpenter, vigorous to his last days. He was an elderly man and steward of the Jesuits when they were expelled from their property near this location in 1767. In the year 1838 there was a witness in a judicial trial in South America who was born on the night of the great earthquake which destroyed the town of Ambato in 1698. How much longer this man who was cradled by an earthquake lived is not as yet reported. In the State of Vera Cruz, Mexico, as late as 1893 a man died at the age of one hundred and thirty-seven. The census of 1864 for the town of Pilaguin, Ecuador, lying 11,000 feet above the level of the sea and consisting of about 2000 inhabitants, gives 100 above seventy, 30 above ninety, five above one hundred, and one at one hundred and fifteen years.
