RHODA WARD HOWARD

The Cortland News, Friday, January [?], 1884.

THE OLDEST INHABITANT.

Interesting Sketch of a Kentucky Woman Who is 117 Years Old.

   The following was written by Colonel V. B. Young, for the Frankfort (Ky.) Yeoman, and treats of a most remarkable personage:

   Rhoda Howard, who is now living six miles southwest of the town of Owingsville, Bath county, Ky., on Slate creek, was born in Wilks county, State of North Carolina, in December, 1767.

   Her maiden name was Ward. She married Jesse Deboard in Wilks county, North Carolina, in 1790, and they had three children—Wesley, Washington and Franklin.

   In 1808 they emigrated to Kentucky, coming through the Cumberland gap, and settled in Montgomery county, near Morgan station. After living here for several years, Jesse Deboard returned to North Carolina on a visit to his old home, leaving his wife and children at their old home, and Mrs. Howard said that she heard that he had died, but she never received any letter. In those days there were no mails, and the means of communication were very limited, depending altogether upon persons traveling to and from Kentucky.

   Not hearing from her husband, and only incidentally that he was dead, and waiting and watching for him for several years, she concluded he was dead, and she married Henry Settle. By this marriage she had two children, J. Settle and Julia Ann. Julia Ann is quite an old lady, living in the town of Owingsville, married to Mr. Kountz.

   Rhoda’s second husband, Henry Settle, died, and she married James Howard, a Revolutionary soldier. He died in the county of Bath many years ago, and, as the old lady expressed it, "so long ago that I have forgotten the time." She is now drawing a pension from the United States government as the widow of a Revolutionary soldier, James Howard.

   I rode out to her house, and rode up to the yard fence and halloed, and she came to the door and invited me in. I went in, and she requested me to take a seat. She is a very remarkable-looking woman. She looks as old as the hills, and is the oldest looking person that I ever saw. She is tall and spare, about five feet eight inches high, stands erect, does not stoop as the old people generally do, has a Roman nose, dark, piercing eyes. Her hair is as white as the driven snow; she has sallow complexion, and is lively, active and talkative. She sweeps up the hearth and sits at the table and feeds herself. She told me that she had lost her teeth many years ago, and that one of her eyes failed, but that she can see as well with the other as ordinary people.

   I asked who was living with her, and she replied her two boys, Washington and Franklin. I asked her how old her two boys were: she said Washington was seventy-eight and Franklin was thirteen months younger.

   I asked her about her health, she stated that she had always enjoyed good health, and had taken but very little medicine; that she had a spell of sickness in 1859, and that was the only sickness she had ever had; that she had always led a very active live, and that she had to work hard in her young days, and had suffered many hardships and privations; that the present generation knew nothing about how the people used to live, and what they endured and suffered; but with it all she believed that the people then were happier and more hospitable than they are now. She said that the age in which she lived and worked had passed away, and the people of this age and generation had too much shoddy and not enough of the reality of life; that the present race was not raised to grapple with the world and to trample obstacles under their feet in their pathway through life. She said that people now are not like the people of her day; that in her day they were sociable and were willing to help one another along, but now, if a man helped you, you had to pay him for it.

   She showed me several articles manufactured by her own hands when she was a young woman. She still has a pair of hand-cards that she says she has carded many pounds of cotton and wool upon. She asked me for a pipe of tobacco, and when I gave it to her she reached down and drew her pipe through the hot ashes, and sat in the corner by her wood fire and smoked and chatted. I asked her how long she had been smoking, and she replied since she was sixteen years old. She said that the reason she commenced was that she was troubled with phthisic. She said that in her day the way the old people cured the phthisic was: They would take a child to the woods and stand  it up by the side of a tree, and then put an auger on top of its head and bore a hole in the tree, and then take the lock of hair from the top of the child's head and put it in the auger-hole and drive a pin in it, and as the child outgrew the tree it would get well. But if the tree outgrew the child it would never recover.

   Mrs. Howard is a very remarkable woman in many respects. Although she is 116 years old, she is still in possession of all her faculties.

   I presume that she is the oldest living person now in Kentucky. She is the connecting link between the last and the present century. She was nine years of age when the bell of Independence hall in Philadelphia rang and proclaimed liberty throughout the land. She was born the same year that George Washington visited the eastern portion of our State and made surveys on the Big Sandy. She was born two years before Daniel Boone stood upon the Cumberland range and "viewed with admiration the grandeur of the scenery of "Kaintuck.'' She was eight years old when Boone erected his fort on the Kentucky river.

   She was sixteen years of age when the treaty of peace was signed with England, by which we became free and independent States. She was born when the State was a vast and gloomy wilderness, filled with wild animals, and was the hunting-ground and the battlefield of the red man of the West; its fertile soil was uncultivated and its vast forests were untouched by the ax of civilized men.

   She has seen empires rise and fall. She has seen the war that gave us our independence, the war of 1812, the Mexican war and the last civil war, and still she lives. She has lived to see the population of Kentucky become 2,648,690 human beings. She has lived to see our country increase from thirteen colonies to thirty-seven free and independent States. She has lived to see the population of the United States increase from 8,928,214 in 1700 to 60,165,788 in 1880.

   She was born a subject of George III., of England, and was made a sovereign herself in 1783. She has seen George III., George IV., William IV., and Victoria all upon the throne of England. She has seen the administration of every president of the United States, from Washington down to Arthur. She has lived to see this trackless forest leveled by the ax of civilization, and the wilderness turned into waving fields of grain, and cities arise and teem with a mighty population. Where does there live another person in all of this vast country that has been an eye-witness to all of these mighty changes in government, production, wealth, the arts and sciences?

Foreign News.

   COUNT TOLSTOI, Russian minister of interior, has been sentenced to death by nihilists.

   TWO thousand steel workers in London struck against a reduction of wages.

   A DISPATCH to the London Times from Paris says: "Statistics show that the prohibition of the importation of pork from America seriously curtails the food supply of France, and, as in such prohibition the imports from other countries fell off. It is evident that there is no other source where from the demand can be supplied. Parliament has undertaken a heavy responsibility in advising the prohibition."

   THE French press bitterly attack England for abandoning the large section of country known as the Soudan to El Mahdi, the False Prophet.

   Two THOUSAND Annamites attacked a French post, which was held by fifty marines. After several hours' hard fighting the enemy retired, with the loss of 100 in killed and wounded.

   DURING a fire near Hanoi, in Tonquin, the French artillery magazine was blown up and a large quantity of shells and munitions for the French fleet was destroyed. Several French artillerymen and ten auxiliaries were wounded.

   SIXTY THOUSAND Italians took part in a pilgrimage to the tomb of the late King Victor Emanuel at Rome.

   AURELIAN SCROLL, a prominent Parisian journalist, and Count Albert de Dion, a gay and festive French nobleman, have fought a duel, in which the former was wounded in the side.

   THE French losses at the capture of Sontoy are officially stated to be four officers killed, eleven seriously [wounded] and eleven slightly wounded, and seventy-seven men killed and 231 wounded.

   GENERAL "CHINESE" GORDAN has resigned his commission in the British army and engaged with the Belgian government to suppress the slave trade on the Congo, Africa,

   FIFTY-SIX steamers at Marseilles, France, were abandoned by their crews, who had gone on a strike.

   HUGO SCHENCKE, a resident of Vienna, has confessed to having murdered and robbed four girls whom he had promised to marry. He also murdered his aunt and niece, and had an accomplice, who was captured.

   THE Viceroy of Canton has issued a proclamation calling upon the people to repel the French invaders. Catholic missionaries are being arrested in China and threatened with death.

   THE insurrection under the leadership of El Mahdi, the False Prophet, has spread from Upper Egypt to Lower Egypt. Colonel Coetlogan, commander of the Khedive's forces in the city of Khartoum, was directed by the Khedive to evacuate the place. The Egyptian prime minister telegraphed from Cairo an order that all the Christian populace should leave Khartoum under a guard of troops, to prevent their being massacred. The forces of El Mahdi which were marching on Khartoum were estimated at over 70,000. Numerous Arab sheikhs have declared for El Mahdi.

   FOUR THOUSAND unemployed persons hold a meeting in Paris and listened to speeches favoring an armed revolution.

   SWINE for breeding purposes imported into Canada from the United States are to be quarantined by the Canadian authorities twenty-one days.

CRIMES AND CASUALTIES.

Murders, Hangings, Suicides, Railroad Disasters and Losses by Fire in 1883.

   According to revised statistics, the whole number of murders committed in the United States in 1883 was 1,697, against 1,467 in 1882, and 1,265 in 1881. The causes were as follows: Liquor, 196; jealousy, 218; self-defense, 16; quarrels, 623; insanity, 57; infanticide, 30; patricide, 7; matricide, 3; fratricide, 16; resisting arrest, 86; killed by thieves and highwaymen, 147; thieves and highwaymen killed, 80; unknown, 183; criminal outrage, 6; duels, 5; by poison, 24.

   One hundred and seven hangings occurred in the United States last year; against 131 in 1882 and 90 in 1881. By States they were as follows: Illinois, 3; District of Columbia, 1; Pennsylvania, 3; Massachusetts, 1; New York, 6; Vermont, 1; New Jersey, 2; Montana, 2; Ohio, 4; Indiana, 2; California, 1; Texas, 7; Maryland, 3; Arkansas, 16; New Mexico, 2; Indian Territory, 2; Alabama, 3; Georgia, 13; North Carolina, 5; South Carolina, 7; Virginia, 7; Missouri, 2; Mississippi, 3; Florida, 1; Louisiana, 6; Tennessee, 2; Kentucky, 3. Of this number 54 were whites, 51 colored (all hanged in the South), 1 Indian, 1 Mexican and 1 Chinaman.

   There were 727 suicides in the United States in 1883, of which the causes were: Melancholy, 215; unknown, 128; business losses, 28; liquor, 66; insanity, 108; domestic infelicity, 72; ill-health, 46; disappointed love, 64.

   Railroad disasters in the United States reached the number of 775 in 1883, against 820 in 1883, and 1,040 in 1881. The whole number injured were 1,116, against 1,115 in 1882, and 527 in 1881.

   Total losses by fire in the United States last year were: $41,554,750. Following is the loss by months: January, $5,116,000; February, $2,203,000; March, $2,042,000; April, $2,080, 000; May, $2,661,000; June, $2,322,000; July, $3,901,000; August, $4,360,000; September, $2,600,000; October, $3,570,000; November, $786,000; December, $3,353,750.