The Washington times., 1911-08-20
OLDEST RESIDENT
Of TAKOMA PARK
NEARING EIGHTY
Mrs. Amanda @. Thomas
First to Make Home in
That Section.

II Mrs. Amanda Gertrude Thomas. of
Takoma Park, lives until September 3
next-and there is every probability
that she will see many more Septem-
bers-she will have passed the seventy
eighth milestone in her life.
Oldest resident OF Takoma Park, Mrs.
Thomas lives in the first house COM
pleted in that suburb. She has seen
the forests fall around her home and
has witnessed the coming of all resi-
dents about her. She is well known
and we'll beloved by all with whom
she is acquainted.
IN 1888 when Mrs Thomas, with her
husband, settled in Takoma Park, for
est fires were common, and on one oc-
casion, in 1885, fire which had trav-
eled several miles from the northeast,
came near wiping the village which had
arisen, OF the map. A back fire, start
ed by some railroad men who were
working near, was all that saved the
scattered houses Of the locality.
Native of New Jersey.
Mrs. Thomas relates that she and
other women sailed forth to fight the
fire, armed with wet blankets and axes.
Thick growths of underbrush, which
were dry, made the fire difficult to con-
Quer. At that time there was but one
road in TAkoma Park, the old turnpike,
since named Carol avenue.
A member of the Wilson family, one
of the oldest in New Jersey, Mrs.
Thomas traces her ancestory back to
the very earliest settlements in the
colony of New Jersey. county Sussex.
Her great-grandfather Wilson was an
officer in the British army during the
French and Indian war, and, as re-
ward for bravery and wounds received
at the battle of Fort Ticonderoga, King
George III of England, granted him
large holdings Of land in Sussex county,
New Jersey, which place has since
been the home Of the Wilson family.
Born in 1888, during the first admin
istration of President Jackson, Mrs.
Thomas as a young woman taught In
the schools of Sussex county, later re-
moving 20 Iowa, where she married
Mr.. Thomas. Going back to New Jer-
sey, she and Mr.. Thomas after year
removed to West Virginia, later coming
to Washington.
Talks of Old Times.
Mrs. Thomas, whose memory remains
remarkably clear, talks of the days
when slaves were freed in New Jersey,
and of the days before railroads, when
the marketing from the Wilson estate
was carried to the old town of New
burg, forty miles distant, oxen being
used to draw the huge covered wagons.
While Mrs. Thomas is the last of her
immediate family, several of her rela-
tives are we'll along toward the CEN
tury mark. She lives alone, her hus-
band, who was prominent in the log
cabin politics at Takoma Park during
the Benjamin Harrison campaign,
dying on the day President Harrison
was inaugurated, March 4. 1889. By all
the older citizens Mrs. Thomas is
Familiarity called Grandmother"
Mrs. Thomas has but one child. Mrs.
Augusta Wilson Long, whose husband
IS a mining man in Nevada. Mr. Long
was the discoverer Of the greatest nat
ural bridge in the world, in San Juan
county, Utah, and in 1908 President
Roosevelt Officially proclaimed that the
bridge should be called the Mighty
Augusta" in honor of Mrs. Thomas
daughter. The bridge is so large that
It could span the Capitol.