At the beginning of this year, I wrote about Mary Kiona, an Upper Cowlitz native of the Tai’t-na-pam tribe who was born on Jan. 3 in either 1849, 1852, 1853 or 1855 and died in June 1970, meaning she lived to be 107, 115, 117 or 121.
She was the oldest Pacific Northwest resident I’d ever heard of — until last week.
I received an email from Mary Lemons, who signed up for my author newsletter and suggested I write my next novel about her great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Ramsey Lemons Wood, an early Northwest pioneer known as the Mother Queen of Oregon.
She lived to be 120.
I immediately launched into research on ancestry.com and newspapers.com. Sure enough, I found articles about this Knoxville, Tennessee, native who was 2 years old when George Washington became the first president of the United States on April 30, 1789.
The Washington Post wrote about the Oregon woman on Nov. 26, 1905, under the headline “Oldest Woman in the Wide Wide World.”
“The child that learned to lisp when Washington was President in the eighteenth century still lives to talk of President (Theodore) Roosevelt in the twentieth century, and eyes that a hundred years ago looked lovingly upon her first-born, today smile with a fading light upon the ‘child of her old age,’ a woman now past seventy-five.”
According to newspaper accounts, Mary Ramsey was born May 20, 1787, on a Knoxville farm to English immigrants Richard and Catherine (Gann) Ramsey, the sixth of their eight children, and at 119, still walked about her garden and chatted with neighbors on her porch, sewed and shared memories of years long past.
“She was a tiny maid when the French Revolution was dyeing the gutters of Paris red,” The Washington Post reported. “She was a laughing school girl of seven when Tennessee was admitted as a State to the Union. She was a blushing bride when the great Napoleon ceded Louisiana (Territory) to the United States, and a proud young mother when Lewis and Clark tramped over a continent to ‘where rolls the Oregon.’”
She recalled horse-and-buggy days in 1812 when her father grabbed his old gun and marched off to fight for his country.
“I plainly remember the war of 1812,” she told a reporter in her Southern accent. “My father fought during the last six months under Andrew Jackson, but he was a paid soldier. We lived near the highway, and I saw Andrew Jackson driving from his home to Washington to be President and waved to him. We were all Democrats and are still.”
Other newspaper accounts indicate she danced with Jackson as a child, but they don’t quote her as saying so.
The Washington Post article in 1905 stated: “Though probably the oldest woman in the world, her intellect is still bright and keen, as is shown by the fact that this last summer her testimony decided a lawsuit and settled the title to property which was deeded over forty years ago. Her answers were to the point and efforts to confuse her were unavailing. She testified regarding minute details, showing that the years have not dulled her recollection.”
Mary’s mother, Kate Ramsey, died at the age of 110.
When she was 17, Mary Ramsey wed a prosperous farmer, Jacob Lemons, but after four children and many happy years together, her husband died in 1839, leaving her a widow about the time President Andrew Jackson finished his second term in office.
After traveling west in her mid-60s in 1852 or 1853, Mary Lemons married John Wood on May 28, 1854, in Hillsboro, Oregon, where they built the city’s first hotel, the Commercial Hotel. Mary tended bar in the saloon until they sold the hotel to her daughter, Catherine. Mary and John shared life together until he died in 1867. Mary later served as Hillsboro postmaster.
In addition to her two husbands, Mary Lemons Wood survived both her son, Isaac, and daughter, Nancy E. Bullock, by about four decades. Her eldest daughter, Mary J. Lemons, died in Tennessee in 1903 at 98. Her youngest daughter, Catherine Bridgette Lemons Southworth Smith Reynolds, 75, devoted her later life in Hillsboro to caring for her 119-year-old mother.
The Washington Post article from 1905 quotes Mary Lemons Wood as saying, “I have lived quite a life and never had much excitement. I never had but one serious illness, which was 36 years ago, when I had typhoid fever, and as a result lost the sight of my left eye. My ‘third sight’ is well worn, and though I can see out of but one eye, I can still thread a needle or read large type. Since my illness, I have been hard of hearing, too, and you have to shout.”
She described losing her teeth 41 years earlier, which would have been about 1864, and wore false teeth.
“A most remarkable thing happened last spring,” she told the reporter. “I cut a tooth. Would you believe it? It caused some irritation, and is considerable annoyance, interfering with the false teeth, but it is there all right. I haven’t the least idea how it happened.”
She weighed 130 pounds and stood 5-foot-3 when she was young. She still dressed and cared for herself at 119, she said, but her daughter helped on occasions when her extremities grew numb, causing what she described as “a sinking spell.”
Shortly after her 120th birthday in 1907, former Oregon Sen. George H. Williams, who served as attorney general under President Ulysses S. Grant, crowned Mary Ramsey Lemons Wood as “Mother Queen of Oregon,” assisted by Hon. Joseph D. Lee, president of the Oregon Pioneer Association, a coronation ratified on July 4, 1907, at the Marquam Grand Opera House in Portland with Henry L. Pittock presiding.
Wood attributed her longevity in a Feb. 7, 1907, article in the Bluefield Evening Leader in Bluefield, West Virginia, datelined Portland, to “right living and ‘trusting in God.’”
“I always tried to keep from worrying about little things,” she said. “I’ve always attended to my own business and knew that if I did my work, the Almighty would see that I was well looked after. No, I don’t intend to die for a good many years. The thought of it never enters my head. I have just subscribed for a magazine for five years and expect to read the last issue.”
Alas, it wasn’t to be.
Mary Ramsey Lemons Wood died at her home in Hillsboro on Jan. 1, 1908, at the age of 120 years, seven months, and 11 days. She had lived in three centuries — the 18th, 19th and 20th — and belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church for 104 years. She lived under the leadership of every U.S. president from George Washington through Theodore Roosevelt but said she most admired “Teddy” and “Old Hickory,” a.k.a. Jackson.
She was buried at Hillsboro Pioneer Cemetery. Her headstone reads: “Mary Ramsey Wood, 1787–1908, First Mother Queen of Oregon Pioneers.”
However, some claim her longevity was exaggerated, saying that Pennsylvania native Sarah Knauss, who was 119 when she died on Dec. 30, 1999, holds the distinction as the oldest American on record, according to the Guinness World Records. Census records have also challenged Wood’s longevity claim, contending she was born in about 1809, although women have been known to lie about their age.
I’ve been honored to hear the stories of many nonagenarians and even centenarians as a personal historian recording life stories and as a columnist for The Chronicle.
The longest-lived person I’ve ever met was Lola (Ritter) Bowen Stancil, a descendant of 1845 Centralia settlers Sidney and Nancy Ford. She was born in 1915 and celebrated her 107th birthday on Jan. 31, 2022. She died about six months later. I had interviewed her a decade earlier while compiling two history books, “Bucoda: The Little Town with a Million Memories” and “Chapters of Life in Bucoda.” And I interviewed her only months before her 105th birthday, when she described suffering from Spanish influenza as a child, riding in a buggy to Camp Lewis when her uncles left for World War I, and attending the two-room Stony Point School.
Another former local resident who worked as a Rosie the Riveter during World War II may yet reach Stancil’s age. Georgie Bright Kunkel, whose mother served as Lewis County schools superintendent from 1923 to 1931 and whose brother, Norman, was a runner who competed for the Olympics, celebrated her 100th birthday with a drive-by celebration in Seattle on Aug. 31, 2020. She turned 104 at the end of August.
Shirley (French) Nelson, of Chehalis, whose stories I shared in this column, marked her 103rd birthday in early July. And Don Buswell, of Toledo, who was born on Aug. 30, 1922, celebrated his 102nd birthday last summer.
I’ve also said goodbye to centenarians I wrote about in the past — Virginia (Bond) Breen, of Chehalis, who was 104 when she died on Dec. 7, 2020; Pearl Miller, of Chehalis, who danced with servicemen as part of the United Service Organization during World War II and was 103 when she passed away on Aug. 30, 2022; and Lisa (Pederson) Blomdahl, who was 101-and-a-half when she died on July 20, 2023.
I’m in awe of men and women with such great longevity and look forward to sharing the stories of even more remarkable centenarians who have witnessed so much change.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
