Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1899 — MAY SEE A THIRD CENTURY. [ARTICLE]

MAY SEE A THIRD CENTURY.

Massachusetts People Bom ioo Years Ago Still Hale and Hearty. The oldest man in Worcester county, certainly the oldest man in the town of Barre, and one of the oldest Harvard college men living, is Dr. William Lambert Russell. Dr. Russell, according to the Worcester (Mass.) Spy, was born in Carlisle, in the part,of that town which was for-l merly a portion of Concord. October 28, 1799. The doctor had one sister and three brothers; one of his brothers- is still living, and is nearly 92 years of age. In 1831 Dr. Russell re ceived hi? degree of M. D. from Harvard medical school. lie manages his own business affairs, and is a director in the First national bank, at whose meetings he is a constant attendant. He has held various town offices, and has l been a member of the school committee for a long term of years There is in the town of Berlin one life which began in the eighteenth century, which has lasted through so much of the nineteenth, and which may possibly remain here to greet the twentieth. Rebecca "Whitcomb was born in Bolton November 27, 1799, being the second of ten children of Silas Whitcomb and Lucy Eveleth. In the old town of Harwick, living, as it were, among the flowers of a commodious bay window in a fine old farmhouse known as Hillside home, is Mrs. Sophia Wheeler, who bids fair to see the dawn of the twentieth century, having already lived in two centuries. The grand old lady is a product of New England, having been born in Randolph, Vt., December 11, 1799. Mrs. Wheeler is the eldest and only survivor of a family of seven children. In 1825 she married John Wheeler and went to Rutland, where seven of their eight children were born. The three son?, now living, are Moees, in Springfield; Charles, in Barre, and George, in Oakland, Cal.