“Six Score and Fourteen Years”

The opening line to the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 was, “Four score and seven years ago …”, however, how many individuals know how to figure what six score and fourteen years would equivalence be? One very old Irish lady in Kerrtown, Crawford County, Pennsylvania might have been able to provide the actual figure back in the first half of 1904. It was then that Mary Murphy gave an interview to a reporter claiming to be 134 years old, born originally in Ireland in 1770 and coming to America in 1870 when she was 100 years old.
That advanced age for a human is quite exceptional, in any time frame of history. That was my immediate reaction on spotting an article from the Frederick Post, dated August 8, 1904, while I was researching an ancestor from Frederick, Maryland. The 18-line article, titled, “Dead at 134 Years - Oldest Woman in Pennsylvania Dies at Kerrtown” was definitively worth reading. It covered how she had passed away on August 6th and had been interviewed several months earlier and claimed to be 134 years. She also stated she had seen first hand the killings and brutally of the Irish Rebellion which started in 1798 in Ireland.
Even through Mary Murphy was not a relative, it became a fascinating search to learn more about Mary Murphy and see if she was truly the age she claimed to be. When a genealogist delves into research, newspaper articles of the times where their ancestor lived can be extremely helpful. Seeing this one article in the small town newspaper of Frederick made me wonder if the story was carried in other newspapers of the day. Sure enough, similar articles of her life, death and advanced age were in the Washington Post, Atlanta Constitution, and New York Times, to name a few.
With so many newspapers across the country repeating the story of Mary Murphy, this truly had to authentic. Yet, I felt I still could not accept the information from the newspapers at face value, more research was necessary on the life and death of Mary Murphy.

ADVICE: Checking vital records and cemetery records did prove Mary Murphy was not the 134 years as 'claimed' in the newspapers of the times. She was more like 104 years, still pretty 'old'. It is just an example of how you you do need to research all newspapers BUT never take one or all at 'face value'. One newspaper can just carry a story from another newspaper and not really check their information.

I have located a great deal of information on my ancestors by using the newspapers but always use additional sources to do a double or triple check of the data.

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