Monday, May 12, 2014

1886 - Seventy-four Years Married

WESTPORT, Ct., April 18. - Captain Alfred Taylor, of the Poplar Plains District, some two miles north of the town of  Westport, is now in his 95th year. He is the oldest voter in Fairfield county, and one of the oldest in the State. He owns a farm of several hundred acres, and has worked upon it during a period of more than two generations. His wife, Mrs. Chloe Taylor, is 92. Should they live till Good Friday, April 23, they will have completed seventy four years of married life. A diamond wedding will be held in their honor, to which hosts of friends will be bidden, and in which every descendant and relative will take part.

Captain Taylor, when asked about his great age and the rapid flight of time, says he is unable to realize where the years have gone. To him the events of remote periods which he has witnessed seem to have occurred but yesterday. He is a Democrat of the Jeffersonian school, and cherishes the memory of "Old Hickory." When Mr. and Mrs. Taylor began in life, there was not a railroad or telegraph in existence, and few of the inventions and appliances which make the close of the nineteenth century memorable. Captain Taylor, though troubled with deafness and a slight dimness of sight, physically is well preserved, though during the winter he has passed most of the time in the kitchen, listening as some of his grandchildren read, or exchanging sentiments with Mrs. Taylor, who differs with him in politics and has the faculty of maintaining the sentiments of her arguments. This aged couple have resided sixty-one years in the house which is to be the scene of the diamond wedding.

St Joseph Herald
Saint Joseph, Michigan
April 24, 1886