This week's word is longevity. Again, the keyword of the week is up to everyone's own interpretation. My interpretation of this week's keyword is the longevity of my mother's family. I come from some very hardy, long lived & determined people on her side. For the sake of time, I will only mention a few of them. I will apologize in advance if this post seems to be a bit on the rambling side.
The oldest living person I have in my research is Elizabeth Austin Dennington. She was born in VA in 1764. She married William Dennington, son of Richard & Margaret Dennington in Bush River, Newberry Co., SC on 10 May 1790. William was of Irish descent & served as a Private in Nash's Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers during the War of 1812. They had nine children together: Sarah, Richard, Elizabeth, John, William Mary/Martha, Margaret & two children whose identities are unknown at the present time. William died in 1851 & Elizabeth went to live with her daughters until her death in 1873.
Elizabeth is one of my ancestors whom I have very little on & someone that I wish I knew more about. I have no idea who her parents or family were. She was born in VA in 1764. According to pension papers she filed on her husband's War of 1812 service, she was married to William by a Rev Browne, but there was no longer any surviving documentation to support this. She & William had been given land as recompense for his service in the War of 1812, but at some point in time, that land had been sold. The pension papers state that she was now indigent & living with family. Since there was no written proof of her marriage, she was forced to obtain affidavits from several people who were acquainted with her. One of her daughters wrote a letter detailing her age, infirmity & destituteness. Another relative helped her navigate the legal system to secure what pension funds could be obtained to support her for the rest of her life. She died at the ripe old age of 109 in Oconee Co., SC on 12 Sept 1873. A notice of her death appeared in the local paper, but was not very forthcoming about who Elizabeth had been in life other than a wife & mother. Her husband William served during the War of 1812 in the same regiment as an Amon Austin who was from the same area where Elizabeth & William lived.
Mrs. Elizabeth Dennington, one hundred and nine years of age, died in Oconee County on the 2d instant. She was the mother of nine children, and at the time of her death was living with her youngest child who is sixty-six years old. [Aiken Tribune (Aiken, South Carolina) Saturday, September 20, 1873 ; transcribed by Marla Zwakman]
Could Amon have been related to Elizabeth? I think it might be likely, but when I have tried to research what happened to him, I have not gotten very far, so maybe he did not survive the War of 1812. Maybe one day, I will get over this brick wall, but for now, the questions about Elizabeth remain just that. William & Elizabeth would go on to have a descendant who lived to be 98 years old. This ancestor, my great grandmother Susan Dennington Turnipseed Stewart would be born one hundred years before me & would die two years before my birth, but I was fortunate to hear several stories about her from cousins & my mother. Born during Reconstruction in the South, she had something of a hard life. She had six children by her first husband whom she was instrumental in sending to prison for incest. He was abusive & had made at least one attempt on her life, but his incarceration in Upshur Co., TX set in motion her being forced to sell their property & move back to Ellis County to raise their six children on her own. She lived through WWI & WWII as well as the Spanish-American War & the Great Depression. Her parents, two of her three brothers & her sister Martha died before 1920. She later remarried her widowed brother-in-law Isaac David Stewart, son of Alexander Irving Stewart & Melissa Jones Stewart. Her children married & had children & grandchildren of their own. Four of her six children (Pat, Edna, Ruth & Sallie) lived to close to or in their nineties, so apparently our family has some good genes.
Two other relatives that have lived to an advanced age were my aunts Tomasa Gauna de Quinteros & Maybelle Cook Ray. (I've written about both Tomasa & great grandmother Susan here before in other blog posts). Although Tomasa passed on a few years ago at the age of 96, both she & my great Aunt Maybelle (who will turn 96 this year & is our oldest Cook relative on my mother's side) have lead exceedingly long lives & seen much in their time. Both have been amazing women to me. Aunt Maybelle was injured by an old dead tree falling in her yard while crossing to roll up the windows in her truck in advance of a coming storm. She looked the worse for wear afterwards, but she's fiesty & keeps on kicking in spite of it all. I don't know if it's good genes, righteous living, luck or a healthy diet, but through it all, they endured & their perserverence in the face of everything they have seen & lived through, to me embodies the spirit of the word longevity.
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