Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1914 — OLDEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD. [ARTICLE]

OLDEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD.

Bulgarian Peasant Said to Have Been Born In 1784. Berlin. —The claim of Frau Dutkiewltz, of Posen, born on February 21, 1785, to be the oldest woman In the world Is now contested by Mrs. Baba Vasilka, who was bom in May, 1784, In the little Bulgarian village of Baveisko, where she has lived ever since. The record of her birth is preserved In a neighboring monastery of the Orthodox Greek laith. Baba Vasilka is the daughter of a peasant, and worked as a peasant up to a comparatively recent date. For more than a hundred years she regularly worked in the fields, according to the custom of her country, where women are employed in all sorts of manual labor. When she was born Bulgaria was merely a province of the Turkish Empire, and the entire population groaned under the tyranny of their Turkish rulers. She lives on a pension paid to her by many of her numerous descendants, who number more than one hundred.