Arbelia Wood, reputedly 119 years old
deb...@comcast.net
March 15, 2005, 12:40 AM
CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) -- A woman who may have been among the
world's oldest living people has died. Her family says she was 119.
"I've worked hard all my life," Arbelia Wood said in December. "It's
good for you."
She had pneumonia and died in her sleep Friday at Church of Christ Care
Center in Macomb County's Clinton Township, north of Detroit. She had
lived at the home since 1993.
Her family said she would have turned 120 next month.
"She was a sweetheart. There were 16 of us and she helped raise all of
us," her 91-year-old brother, Olea Jones of Mount Clemens, told the
Detroit Free Press.
Family lore maintains that a white Mississippi farmer gave an ultimatum
to sharecropper and ex-slave Muggie Greer to sleep with him or flee the
farm. Greer gave birth to Wood on April 6, 1885, in Caledonia, Miss.,
her family said. She was the eldest of 16 children.
Mississippi's birth records in Jackson, Miss., date only to 1912,
meaning there is no documentation of her birth.
Wood likely was on the 1890 U.S. Census, but that was destroyed in a
fire in 1921 in the Commerce Building in Washington. She is cited on
the 1900 U.S. census, but that does not include her age, her family
said.
She never had a driver's license. The sole tangible evidence of her age
is inscribed in a family Bible.
The Guinness Book of World Records lists a 114-year-old woman in the
Netherlands as the oldest living person it can document. The oldest
woman in history lived to 122, according to Guinness' Web site.
Her caretakers described her as a feisty woman of deep evangelical
faith.
"She could sometimes cuss some of the aides out or people who were
around and talking to her, but most of the time, she was very loving,"
said chaplain Jerry Starling.
In a December interview, she discussing her work as a housekeeper in
metropolitan Detroit, saying, "People respected me. I don't care how
rich they were, they respected me."
She outlived two husbands, but never had children. She beat breast
cancer twice, Jones said.
Wood said she was thankful to her mother for raising her right.
"I had a smart momma, clever momma. I had to walk the line," she said.
"I was pretty smart myself."
She is survived by her brother, sister Mayde Mobley, 97, of Mount
Clemens, and many nieces and nephews and other extended family members.
A funeral service is set for 11 a.m. Friday at North Broadway Church of
Christ in Mount Clemens.
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Information from: Detroit Free Press, http://www.freep.com