Domestic Vocation

This post made me think of this email my mother just forwarded to me the other day. (I removed personal information for privacy.) My family has some very long-living people in it. My great-grandmother was 97 when she died, my grandmother who is still living (my Nana) will be 88 on October 18. I think my other great-grandmother was in her 90's when she died, too, but I was a very small girl when she did. (And was freaked out a bit to see Christine's prayer card in Dad's side table drawer! She and I shared a name, but since I don't remember her at all and was kind of young, I didn't know what the card was from.)

Anyway, here is the "News of Great Joy" from Mom's family:

Believe it or not,

Gertrude *********

will be celebrating another birthday next week on

Thursday, October 4th, 2007!!!!

She will be

106 years old


She is in excellent health, loves living at ********************* Health Care Center, and enjoys all the activities.

She wins at Bingo a lot, still presents her travel slide shows twice a month, loves arts and crafts, enjoys sing -alongs, relaxes over jig-saw puzzles and is presently rehearsing for a Halloween play. (More details on that next week.)

To look at her, you'd never know she broke a hip 18 months ago. Her smile is seldom missing. She's quick with snappy come-backs when someone's kidding her. Although her memory for details is sometimes lacking, she's quick to grab a pen or pencil and jot down things she wants to remember. There isn't a day when I'm visiting her that someone doesn't say to me, "Your mother is awesome!" or "Your mother is something else!"

We try to keep her aware of all the news you send our way about you and your families. She has many scrapbooks and often puts photos you send, or copies of e-mails, in them. She still sends birthday cards to her 29 great-grandchildren (which incidently range in age from 18 years to 5 months).

If you would like to send her a birthday card, her address is:

*******************************, NJ *****-****

We hope you and your families are also doing well. ALL family members are included in her prayers.

Love, Ruth

Amazing! 106!!! I don't know if I've ever met my great-great aunt, but what I wouldn't give to be able to sit with her (and my girls) and pepper her with questions about her life. A real interview. Maybe I'll write to her and send her pictures of our family, so she can see some of her long-lost distant relatives. :)

By the way, the following all happened in the year 1901 (courtesy Wikipedia):

January 1

World celebrates what is regarded by some as the start of the new century.
The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia. Edmund Barton becomes first Prime Minister.
Nigeria becomes a British protectorate
French rugby team play their first Test against the New Zealand All Blacks.
January 5 - Typhoid fever breaks out in Seattle jail, the first of two typhoid outbreaks in USA during the year.
January 7 - Alferd Packer is released from prison after serving 18 years for cannibalism
January 10 - The first great Texas gusher, oil discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas
January 22 - After reigning for almost 64 years, longer than any other British monarch, Queen Victoria died at the age of 81. Her eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales becomes King, reigning as King Edward VII until 1910. His son, Prince George, Duke of York becomes Duke of Cornwall.
January 28 - Baseball's American League declares itself a Major League

February 20 - The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.
February 25 - J. P. Morgan incorporates the United States Steel Corporation.

March 2 - The U.S. Congress passes the Platt amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
March 4 - US. President William McKinley begins second term.
March 6 - In Bremen an assassin attempts to kill Wilhelm II of Germany.
March 17 - A showing of 71 Vincent van Gogh paintings in Paris, 11 years after his death, creates a sensation.
March 31 - United Kingdom Census 1901

April 25 - New York State becomes the first to require automobile license plates.


May 3 - Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, FL.
May 5 - Official end of the Caste War of Yucatán, although Mayan skirmishers will continue sporadic fighting for the next decade.
May 9 - Australia opens its first parliament in Melbourne.
May 17 - The Stock Market crashes for the first time. This is also the 6th worst crash.
May 25 - Club Atlético River Plate is founded in Argentina.
May 27 - In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.

June 2 - Katsura Taro becomes Prime Minister of Japan
June 12 - Cuba becomes US protectorate


July 4 - The 1,282 foot (390 meters) covered bridge crossing the St.John River at Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada opens. It is the longest covered bridge in the world.
July 24 - O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving three years for embezzlement from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas.

August 5 - Peter O'Connor sets the first International Association of Athletics Federations recognised long jump world record of 24ft 11¾ins. The record will stand for 20 years.
August 21 - The Cadillac Motor Company formed in Detroit, Michigan, USA


September 2 - Vice President Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
September 5 - The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (later renamed Minor League Baseball), is formed in Chicago.
September 6 - American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies there eight days later.
September 7 - The Boxer Rebellion in China officially ends with the signing of the Boxer Protocol.
September 14
With the death of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt succeeds him as President of the United States.
Huo Yuanjia, martial arts practitioner, defeated all four of his challengers, one from France, Britain, Russia, and Japan.
September 26 - The 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, is exhumed and reinterred in concrete several feet thick.

October 2 - Royal Navy's first submarine launched at Barrow.
October 4 - The American yacht Columbia defeats the Irish Shamrock in the America's Cup yachting race.
October 16 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt invites African American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House. The American South reacts angrily to the visit, and racial violence increases in the region.
October 23 - Yale University celebrates its bicentennial.
October 24 - Michigan schoolteacher Annie Taylor goes down Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives.
October 29
In Amherst, Massachusetts, nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of US President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

November 1 - Sigma Phi Epsilon was founded in Richmond, VA
November 9 - Prince George, Duke of Cornwall becomes Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.
November 15
Miller Reese Hutchinson patents Acousticon, a heavy Hearing aid prototype
Alpha Sigma Alpha was founded at Longwood University
November 27 - U.S. Army War College is established.
November 28 - The new state constitution of Alabama disenfranchises black voters via literacy tests and the grandfather clause.

December 3 - US President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking Congress curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".
December 10 - Marie Curie receives doctorate. The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm on the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.
December 12 - Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signal in Newfoundland, Canada; it is Morse code for the letter "S."
December 20 - The final spike is driven to complete the Mombasa-Victoria-Uganda Railway in what is now Kisumu, Kenya.

Undated
In the United Kingdom, Factory Act puts an end to child labour under 12.
Winston Churchill enters the British House of Commons
In Germany, Eugen Hollander makes the first known facelift to a Polish noblewoman
Scotland Yard creates a fingerprint archive
Cleveland Indians founded, under the name "Cleveland Blues".
Europium is isolated by Eugène-Anatole Demarçay.
First prototype Harley-Davidson created
Okapi discovered (previously known only to local natives)
Independent Maya of Eastern Yucatán surrender to Mexico
American Standard Version Bible first published.
Intercollegiate Prohibition Association established in Chicago.
Mordecai Ham, American evangelist enters ministry.
Pablo Picasso begins his Blue Period.
Shō Tai (Shang Tai), the last king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom in modern Okinawa, Japan, dies.

Ongoing
Second Boer War

Not a single famous person born that year is still alive.