Posted by admin on Mar 24, 2009
Mattie Caldwell turned 108 earlier this month. But she didn’t know it at the time.
Caldwell celebrated her March 5 birthday with friends and family at her home in Genesee County’s Flint Township, about 55 miles northwest of Detroit. But she had forgotten what year, exactly, she was born.
Medicare records said 1901, but an old family Bible recorded her birth as having happened in 1898. And there’s no legal record of her birth because she was born at home.
But a genealogist from Okemah, Okla., came to the rescue. Patricia Funchess scoured historical records and found Mattie recorded as a 9-year-old in the 1910 census, making the 1901 date the correct one.
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