Middletown transcript., 1869-08-21

stances are among the humber classes of
Scotch, Irish, and negroes, where formal
entries are but little attended to. The
middle and upper classes, among whom
authentic records are more plentiful, take
but small part in the marvels of longev-
ity. "Can actuaries," it is asked, "refer
us to a single instance of an assured per-
son living to a hundred and forty, thirty,
twenty, ten, aye, to one hundred and ten ?"
The legal evidence is almost always def
cient. If an entry of birth or baptism is
found in family Bible there is no proof
that it was written at the time Of the event
or that the dates were correctly set down.
In one case clergyman, investigating an
alleged instance of centenarianism, found
that the Bible which contained the entry
was only sixty years old, and that no 9TH
er testimony was forthcoming
Registers of birth were not formally
used and legally established till after the
year 1880; all such registers before that
date were voluntary and therefore unccr-
tain. Even parish registers are not al
ways reliable, for many of them, giving
the year of death, mention the age Of the
deceased but do not name the year of
BIRTH so that there are not two dates to
correct each other.
Sometimes tombstones are re-chiseled to
restore the half-decayed epitaphs, and then
the village mason puzzled at some of the
partially y-obliterated figures, makes a guess
at them, and puts in the date or the age
which seems to him nearest the original.
There is tombstone in Conway church.
yard, recording the fact that Lowry Ow-
ems Vaughan, died in 1866, at the age of
1872, and that her husband, Wm. Vaughan,
died in 1875, at the age of II. Now a
recent observer of the tombstone has re-
marked that the lady must (if this be true)
have been nearly hundred years old when
William Vaughan married her; and as the
figures on the stone have a rather freshly
cut appearance, he prefers the supposition
that 1872 was an incorrect recruiting of an
earlier incision. The Worcester Chroni-
Gle, 1852, drew attention to a tombstone in
Cleve Prior churchyard, which recorded
the death of person at the startling age
of 300; this is supposed to have been an
Ignorant mason's way of expressing 80,
that is 80 and ga kind of error not un-
frequent among the humber classes. The
Times noticed in 1913, that the register of
Shorcditch parish contained an entry of
Thomas Cam, who died in 1888, at the
age of 207, having lived in II reigns. An
investigator afterwards pointed cut that
Sir Henry Ellis, in his History of Shore
ditch" " put down the age at 107 and an
examination of the register elected the fact
that II had been altered to '2' quite re-
Gently by some mischieyous person who
probably wished to poke fun at the anti
quaries. Instances of the following kind
are known to have occurred. 4 young
married couple have son whom they name
John, and who dies in infancy twenty years
afterwards another son receives the similar
name of John: and then, in neighbors gos-
sip eighty years afterwards, one John be-
comes confounded with the other, and man
really eighty years old figures in popular re-
pute as a centenarian. Some aged per-
sous like to be considered older than they
arc, on account of the celebrity it gives
and they do not shrink from few cram
mcrs' to bring this about.
The Rev. Mr. Fletcher, as he was cal
led, who was first farmer, then a soldier,
then employed in the West India Docks,
and then Methodist local preacher, used
to say that he was over a hundred years
old; he drew great crowds to hear such
phenomenon preach. He probably be-
lieved himself to be as old as he said, and
at his death his age was recorded as 10S
but a subsequent Investigation showed that
he was much less instead of much more
than centenarian. The writer of this
paper knew of an old woman many years
ago who obtained notoriety for being, in
her own words, "hundert all but two,"
and for being able to hold a sixponcc hor-
izontally between her nose and chin but
he doubts whether there was any evidence
of her age beyond her own assertion.
There can be no question that this kind
of iucredulity renders service, in so far as
it induces careful examination into the
testimony for alleged facts of longevity.
Nevertheless centenarianism (and few
years beyond the even hundred) rest on
too many and too varied data to be quite
overthrown.
Two HEROES. Before the recent rebel
Al L