Allen, Mary - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.

Name: Mary Allen
Age: 41
Sex: Female
Month of Death: October
State of Death: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Childbirth
Occupation: Housekeeper

~ Hancock County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Wright, Ebenezer - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Elenezer {Ebenezer?} Wright
Age: 59
Sex: Male
Month of Death: January
State of Birth: Massachusetts
Cause of Death: Stroke

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Wiley, Harriet - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Harriet Wiley
Age: 24
Sex: Female
Month of Death: June
State of Birth: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Flux

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Wiley, Elester - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Elester Wiley
Age: 4
Sex: Female
Month of Death: June
State of Birth: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Flux

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Wilson, Margarite A. - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Margarite A. Wilson
Age: 4 months
Sex: Female
Month of Death: April
State of Birth: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Small Pox

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Williams, Nathan - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Nathan Williams
Age: 70
Sex: Male
Month of Death: March
State of Birth: Virginia
Cause of Death: Fever

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Williamson, Virginia - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Virginia Williamson
Age: 21
Sex: Female
Month of Death: April
State of Birth: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Pneumonia

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

You can visit the memorial page for Virginia [Carter] Williamson.

Williamson, Sarah Adaline - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Sarah A. Williamson
Age: 18
Sex: Female
Month of Death: August
State of Birth: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Spine Disease

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

You can visit the memorial page for Sarah Adaline Williamson.

Watson, Nancy - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Nancy Watson
Age: 9
Sex: Female
Month of Death: November
State of Birth: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Croup*

Croup - Laryngitis, diphtheria, or strep throat.

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Warren, Lafayette - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Lafayette Warren
Age: 11
Sex: Male
Month of Death: March
State of Birth: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Typhoid

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Walker, Jonathan - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Jonathan Walker
Age: 52
Sex: Male
Month of Death: September
State of Birth: North Carolina
Cause of Death: Thrown

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Trion, Martha J. - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Martha J. Trion
Age: 23
Sex: Female
Month of Death: April
State of Birth: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Typhiod

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Tosh, Elenden - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Elenden Tosh
Age: 3
Sex: Male
Month of Death: March
State of Birth: Kentucky
Cause of Death: Pneumonia

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Thomas, Susan R. - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: Susan R. Thomas
Age: 10 months
Sex: Female
Month of Death: February
State of Birth: Tennessee
Cause of Death: Hives

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Taylor, William - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: William Taylor
Age: 70
Sex: Male
Month of Death: May
State of Birth: North Carolina
Cause of Death: Dropsy*

Dropsy - Edema (swelling), often caused by kidney or heart disease.

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

You can visit the memorial page for William Taylor.

Taylor, John - 1860

1860 mortality schedule recorded between 01-Jun-1859 and 31-May-1860.  Items marked with an * are defined at the end.

Name: John Taylor
Age: 30
Sex: Male
Month of Death: October
State of Birth: North Carolina
Cause of Death: By Wagon

~ Carroll County Tennessee 1860 Mortality Schedule

Holy Eagle, James - 1990

James Holy Eagle

My grandfather, his name is Iron Horse. He was with the Indians when they wiped out Custer," says James Holy Eagle.

On his living room wall hangs a painting by French artist Guy Simon picturing him and Sitting Bull. From the ceiling hang streamers with the six sacred colors of the Sioux: red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white.

James Holy Eagle is the oldest Sioux Indian—"a peaceful man," says his granddaughter, "because he worked on all the treaty issues." In 1975, he met with President Gerald Ford to talk about broken Indian treaties and claims to land taken from the Indians—a meeting that drew a favorable written response from Ford, though little action. In honor of his age and place in Sioux history, South Dakota has declared a Chief Holy Eagle Day.

“It's not the same being an Indian as it used to be," says Holy Eagle. "In the old days was a whole lot better. Right now in this town if I see an Indian and if he don't know me he goes right on. Before that, when you see an Indian come, you shake hands and talk. In the olden days all Indians was the same as related."

In those good old days, he once stopped to talk with an old Indian couple at a favorite meeting place--"down by the crick"--a place called Mother Butler’s. Holy Eagle had been raised by his
stepmother Alice Lone Bear. But the old woman of the couple thought that his real mother's name was Good Woman, who was of the family of Sitting Bull.  The man of the couple had known his father, Iron Horse, and had also fought in the battle that killed Custer.

“I asked the old man, I said, 'Grandfather, I know when the Indians fought Custer. I know you were there. Grandfather, I want to know who killed Custer.’ He said, 'I was the youngest one, and at that time they were fighting over there on horseback and guns were going smoking, and I can't tell you who killed Custer.' That's what he told me. He don't know. Years ago after that, somebody told me he heard Rain-in-the-Face killed Custer."

James Holy Eagle was 12 when he started attending a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school at Pine Ridge and later, in 1912, started attending Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. He studied to become a printer and distinguished himself as a cornet soloist and as a right guard on the football team.

“I got there and learned it was just the same as college. I worked in a printing office, and I played football. We played football against all the white kids over there--Yale, Harvard--you know. We had the best football and track team.

"That's where James Thorpe went. He went to the Olympics. That James Thorpe is an all-around man. He's just as big as I am."

Holy Eagle broke his shoulder in a game against Yale and still has a protruding bone from the injury, but he graduated at the top of his class in 1916 and was hired as a band director and boys' advisor at the Indian school in Greenville, California. When World War I broke out, he enlisted and was sent to Camp Dodge. Irving Berlin was there too. "Our band played a lot of the songs he composed.”

But Holy Eagle remembers the 1918 flu as well as he remembers Berlin. "I had the flu, not too bad, and I had to drive a coach to haul the soldiers to the hospital. Many died. The flu picked out anybody.”

When he left the army in 1919 to manage his aunt's ranch on the reservation near Merriman, Nebraska, he found that many people there had died of the flu too. He worked the ranch, but, as he says, "Printing was my main trade." He found a job in the print shop in Martin, South Dakota. He married in 1922 and had three sons, all of whom enlisted in the military. Besides his work on the ranch and as a printer, he has been a mechanic. In the devastating 1972 flood in Rapid City, South Dakota, he lost many of his possessions. Today he lives by himself in a modest apartment in Rapid City.

"He is a very happy man," says his granddaughter. "He likes men visitors, but he prefers the company of women.

He also likes to be playful.

"You know why Indians wear feathers on their head?" he asks. "To keep their wig wam." He laughs.

"I got white man's teeth, " he says, and laughs again, showing them.

Every morning and night he prays and sings a song in Lakota. "We all should put God first," he says. "It seems like it helps you to go through the day and night.”

"How did I get so old? Well, I tell you--don't worry, that's one thing. Sometimes I'll get hungry, and it don't worry me. I don't worry. Worry will get you old quick."

~ One Hundred Over 100, Moments with One Hundred North American Centenarians by Jim Heymen, Photographs by Paul Boyer, Copyright 1990, Fulcrum Publishing, 350 Indiana Street, Golden, Colorado, pages 4 & 5.

You can visit the memorial page for James Holy Eagle.

Zieske, Della Lucinda [Vandiver] - 1990

Della Zieske

Della Zieske lives alone in a wind-tattered little house that sits close to the beach on a large sand spit projecting into Discovery Bay on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Waters here insist on a year-round temperature of about 45 degrees, cold enough to turn a person into flotsam in fewer than 15 minutes. Seagulls, clams, and salmon love the cold water and foggy beaches. So does Della; she landed a 17-pound salmon a few months after her 100th birthday.

“I try not to catch them any bigger than I can carry.” She is 5 feet tall. Two fishing poles twice her height hang on her kitchen wall. The hooks are shiny and the lines neatly wound. The rest of the house has the abandon of an 11-year-old's room: unfinished projects are strewn everywhere.

“I'm not a good housekeeper. I have too much work to do." A National Geographic lies facedown on the table, the makings of cinnamon rolls clutter the counters, and a large unfinished quilt is suspended like an umbrella over most of her small living room. Her work does not include shooing a long-haired cat from the kitchen counter or cutting off a fledgling tree that has snaked up through a crack in the floor.

As the room temperature starts dropping toward that of the water outside, she relights her small wood stove, wrapping the kindling in newspaper as her "surefire" way of getting it started. With both hands she lifts a rusty gaff hook from a nail near the refrigerator. She's not using it to land a large fish this time but to drag in pieces of firewood.

“I couldn't live in a nursing home. They'd make me keep my room clean. I live here so I can do as I please. People visit me, and when they leave, it's all mine.”

The last of her four husbands died more than 30 years ago. "I've had some offers since then, but I wouldn't want to live with an old man, and a young man wouldn't want to live with me. So this is just fine.”

"I have some regrets. I divorced one of my husbands. He swore at his parents. I told him I wasn't going to be married to anyone who curses his parents.”

And that was that. She left him and never returned. But years later, while living with her next husband, she learned that her divorce had not been a legal one. "I was terrible. I was a bigamist. But we all have something to live down.”

"People always want to judge, but I'll tell you how I judge a person. Just ask him what he thinks of his neighbors. If somebody doesn't like his neighbors, you know there's something wrong with him, not the neighbors.”

"But you don't want to hear an old lady babbling on. Let me give you some blackberry jam I made. Now where did I put it?"

Della was a nurse for nearly 50 years, but she doesn't talk about health much. A pack of cigarettes and a half-filled ashtray have their places among the projects on her kitchen table.

"Oh, I didn't start smoking until I was 50, and most of the time I'm so busy I forget about them.”

"But I don't know how I got so old. I really don't know how this happened. I guess longevity runs in the family. My mother lived to be old. And I've never liked sweets. When I was a little girl, I gave my Christmas candy to the other kids. I never drank much either. But there's another thing. Luck. My third husband and I were walking along the street one winter. It was almost Christmas, and I stopped to look at some colored lights. He was just a few feet ahead of me when a car skidded on the ice and killed him. It could have been me, but it wasn't.”

Della has left a few pieces of newspaper on top of the stove. They start to smolder. She turns and brushes the glowing paper to the floor with a stick. There aren't any smoke alarms in this house, but she doesn't seem worried. The cat doesn't look worried either. They seem to be ready for whatever comes and against any odds—like that little tree easing up through the floor.

~ One Hundred Over 100, Moments with One Hundred North American Centenarians by Jim Heymen, Photographs by Paul Boyer, Copyright 1990, Fulcrum Publishing, 350 Indiana Street, Golden, Colorado, pages 2 & 3.

You can visit the memorial page for Della Lucinda [Vandiver] Zieske.

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