The Washington Post, 19 Dec 1909. "There died in Barren county, Ky., a few days ago "Uncle" Israel Putnam Tisdale, at the remarkable age of 120 years, well authenticated by many circumstances. He lived in three centuries; in this particular equating the record of Thomas Parr, who lived to be 156, and died of a surfeit at the table then. He was as old as the Constitution of the United States, and lived under all of our Presidents from Washington to Taft, both inclusive. He was 10 years old when the first President died, and 68 when the now President was born, but he survived the twenty-second President more than a year, though, Mr. Cleveland lived to be three-score years and eleven. "When this old Negro was born Andrew Jackson was a young lawyer of 22; Napoleon Bonaparte was scarce emerged from the military school of Brienne; Marabeau, Denton, and Robespierre were yet unknown to history; Pitt, Fox, and burks, the great trinity of British eloquence were not yet at their zenith, and Clay, Calhoun, and Webster were children. Sir Walter Scott was a very young man of 18, and Patrick Henry was yet alive, the first orator orf either hemisphere. "Uncle" Israel was a lusty farmhand when Nelson gained "the most glorious and most mournful of victories" at Trafalgar, and he was a man of 26, the husband of a wife and the father of children, when the mighty Corsican demogod went down, the victim of fate at Waterloo. "When Israel Tisdale was born Thomas Jefferson was under 50 - only 46 - and the Declaration of American Independence had been declared but thirteen years before. When Port Sumter was fired on "Uncle" Israel was past threescore and ten, and he lived 44 years after Appomattox. "He died the other day, and his funeral was an event. Hundreds of whites, of both sexes and all ages, were there to mourn the departure of this old servitor, whose heart, perhaps, had never known guile, and whose hand certainly had never brought evil. His life was one of toil. For more than a century he was a day laborer. He knew the carol of the lark at dawn; he had been lulled by the chirp of the cricket at night. It was the simplest life and the plainest food. He was content. He ran, or rather walked, the race set before him, and future generations of both races in Barren county still revere his memory. "What a pity 'tis that Scott, Macaulay, Thackeray, Dickens, Poe, Balzac, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, and others of the cloth didnot live so long, retaining their facilities uimpaired, and their genius undimmed!" Note: Much has been written of Uncle Tisdale in Barren Co. He can be tracked through later censuses, vital statistics, etc. It appears that he was as said, 120 years old. Sandi Sandi's Puzzlers: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gensoup/gorin/puz.html SCKY Links: http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore/Gorin.html GGP: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/