Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1881 — Aged 126 Years. [ARTICLE]

Aged 126 Years.

Roll* [Mo.,] Herald. On Sunday evening, January 9, - there died in this city undoubtedly the oldest woman in America, and, as ' in nearlyall previous instances she was a colored person. Her name was Sarah Clark, and rumor had it that she froze to death, but upon investigation made by friends of the old woman, the rumor proved unfounded, and no donbt her death resulted from sheer old age. She was the great grandmother of Henry Williams, the driver of a dray team in the city, and from him we gleaned the following particulars of this remarkable old woman. Mr. Williams is quite an old man—fifty, we believe—and when a small boy, Mrs. Clark ap>earedas old to him then as before ler death. She never could tell when she was born, but often stated that the Revolutionary War she was the mother of two children. Shedid not know where she resided at that time, but a long while after she was taken to Kentucky as a slave. There she lived for a number of years, feeling then as though she had seen * enough of this world, and battled with its troubles sufficiently to deserve a different life, but that was not her fate. In 1640, or thereabouts, she was brought to Missouri, and as a slave was shifted here and there until after the war, when she settled down to die near Boonville, Mo. In 1872 she came to RniU on a visit to her great grandchild, Mr. Williams. As to ner exact age nobody knows, but if what she told is true she most have been 126 years old. She also stated that she at one time belonged to the Clark family* of Howard county, thiß state, and distinctly remembers nursing the grandfather of General Clark, congressman from the eleventh district, and who was afterward an officer in the war of 1812. After living to this old age she passed away without an attendant at her bedside.