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A Modern Methuselah – Uncle John Long (Colored) Born in 1739 in Virginia A Wonderful Instance of the Longevity of Life — A Man Who Remembers Seeing Washington, Randolph, Braddock, Patrick Henry, Lafayette, Light Horse Harry Lee, Lord Cornwallis, and Many Other Historic Persons of Revolutionary Fame. He
Died at His Home Near Mulberry, Ohio, on Wednesday, April 14th, at the
Advanced Age of One Hundred and Forty-Seven. Funeral Services Were
Conducted by the Rev. J. Furgeson, of Walnut Hills, at the Colored
Baptist Church. John
Long, the subject of this sketch, was born a slave five miles from
Culpepper Court-House and 30 miles from Richmond, Virginia, in about
the year 1739. The name of his master was Mr. Gabe Long, who became
subsequently a Major in the Revolutionary army. John was raised a house
slave in his earlier years. His master being wealthy, and
one of the first families of the Old Dominion, his palatial mansion was
the resort of many of the distinguished men of the time. John Randolph,
Attorney General of the Colony prior to the Revolution, and his son,
Edward Randolph, afterward Governor of Virginia, spent several weeks
during the racing season with Mr. Long. He had a mile track near his
residence and many thoroughbreds in his stable. During any
notable's visit the colored children about the house, little Johnnie
among the number, were occasionally called into a scramble after
biscuit and apples for the entertainment of the guests. In boyhood he
heard the distinguished English divine, Geo. Whitefield, preach in a
grove to an immense concourse of people. He saw Washington and General
Braddock about this time pass through Alexandria, Virginia, on their
way to fight the French and Indians, which induces us to place the date
about 1756. One Saturday, in about the year 1765, the
colored people of the plantation had a holiday to go to Clarksville to
hear the eminent orator, Patrick Henry. He described him as being
a large boned, rather awkard [sic] and coarsely dressed, but with a
magnetic power in oratory. General Lafayette frequently
spent days visiting at Major Long's hospitable mansion, but was so
broken of speech that old Uncle John the subject
of our sketch, could not understand him. He remembered Light Horse
Harry Leo and his harassing Lord Cornwallis, in Greene's famous
retreat, and the subsequent capture of the-British General at Yorktown
in 1781 by Washington. About this time he made two overland trips
in a wagon drawn by six horses to Baltimore with his young master, Wm.
Long. His duties were to groom the horses. On going they remained
over night at the old town of Alexandria — the residence of the
aristocracy of Virginia in the colonial times —and crossed the Potomac
at Georgetown. Washington City was not founded for several years later,
viz, 1791. In
middle life he married a girl named Vina, who died two or three years
later, leaving no children, but burying two. Ha soon
married again a young widow named Mary White, the mother of two or
three children, one of which subsequently became the mother of Mrs.
Harriet Tally now of Mulberry, Clermont county, Ohio. He said he
married her "either before or just after, the stars fell," referring,
no doubt, to the great meteoric shower 1799. His wife was
30, being born about the year 1769, and her husband, the subject of
this memoir, was at this time 60 years of age. This we are led to
believe from the fact that she has frequently told her granddaughter,
Mrs. Tally, that "John was an old man when she was a little girl, and
that he was 60 years old and she was only 30 when they were
married. During his slave life he was sold but once and then to
Tom Watson, of Caldwell county, for $600, the market being very dull at
that time. He descended from father to son, and from sons to
partners for several generations. This was the reason of
his good fortune. He was manager, did no work but superintended, and
was the trusted and honored servant of his master. He and his wife had
a comfortable little cottage, a garden spot, pigs and cows, and plenty
of money. Ho was never publicly whipped in his life, but he
had often to perform 'the unpleasant duty of punishing
others at the post, which he did with the strap or
buck-bush. The day before Christmas every year he would
mount his horse for a ten days’ visit with money in his pocket from his
master, and unquestioned go where he liked. He said he had no occasion
to gain his freedom, for he was never mistreated. Soon after President
Lincoln's assassination in 1865 he came to Mulberry, this county, and
has lived in this vicinity since. His wife, Mary Long, with whom he had
lived peacefully and happily for 80 years, died on the 8th of June,
1869, aged 110 years, and was burled in the Green Lawn cemetery at
Milford. Three children were born to him by his last wife,
none of whom are living. He lived alone in his little log cabin in a
locality near Mulberry, known as Happy Hollow, cooking and caring for
himself. But during the past five years he has been exhibited in all
the large cities of the United States. He was an ethnological wonder
and all museums where he was exhibited drew large crowds to see this
modern Methuselah and to hear him tell his story of his 146 years. He
did not know whether his parents were long-lived or not, as he left
Virginia when they were still living and never heard of them afterward.
He attributes his long life, as much as anything else, to an even
temper. He never fretted or worried over trouble. His diet, he told me,
has been chiefly during his entire life, corn bred and milk, and always
ate a light supper. He never used tobacco in any form, but all of his
life thro' has taken an occasional dram of good whisky, yet never to
excess. He drank coffee and tea, was temperate in his eating and
regular in his habits; his teeth, until quite lately have been
remarkably good, while his eyesight had grown somewhat dim, yet his
hearing was acute as in a youth of twenty. In physical appearance he
was of Herculean mould, and in his prime was an athlete that would have
been a dangerous antagonist. His head was round, showing evenly
balanced mental faculties. His hair and whiskers were of a mouldy look,
betokening great age. His memory was remarkably good, and he could
recall events that transpired a hundred and a hundred and twenty five
years ago more readily than those of recent occurrence. He could
neither read nor write, and had he been a field hand he would have
known but little of his past history, but being a house slave and that
too in wealthy and cultivated families, the important events of the
times have been indelibly imprinted on his mind. We
can only fully comprehend the great length of life of this remarkable
man by reviewing the events of interest that have occurred since
his birth. What historical memories cover this period! At his
birth, 1789, George Washington was a little seven-year-old lad just
beginning school, little dreaming of the destiny that awaited him;
Franklin, then a young printer, had been appointed postmaster of
Philadelphia; Mrs. West, a Quakeress, of Springfield, Pa.
was teaching her little twelve-month-old boy, Benjamin, to walk,
and would have thought it an humorous illusion if she had been
told that the child she was leading would one day become
the President of the Royal Academy of Great Britain and the great
historical painter of the ages. Pope and Swift, Richardson and
Fielding, Hume and Johnson, Goldsmith and Voltaire, Gibbon and Sir
Joshua Reynolds were living. Schiller, Goethe and Burns were not born.
At twenty- five years of age (1764), Frederick the Great was
crushing everything before him in Europe, and laying the
foundation of Germany's greatness. Maria Thresa was Empress of Austria,
and carefully tutoring the little Viennese Princess, Maria
Antoinette, who ten years later was to be come Queen of France.
George III had just ascended the English Throne, and the Stamp
Act, the entering wedge of the American Revolution, was brewing in
the British Parliament. Mozart was a school boy, and Hogarth was dying
in London from the caustic criticisms of Wilkes and Churchill, at
fifty years of age. 1789, Byron was an infant, in the cradle, and
Walter Scott was going to school in Edinburg. The French
Revolution was bursting forth in Paris; Danton, Marit and
Robespierre were leading a mob past the Tulleries, bearing aloft on
spikes freshly decapitated human heads; George Washington
had just taken the oath as the first President of the United States;
the great Bernadia St. Pierre, was dying in France, while Abraham
Lincoln, a five-year-old boy, was playing about an old log house in
Spencer county, Ky., unmindful of the epoch he would one day inaugurate
in the history of the world; Professor Morse was startling the world by
his exhibitions of the electric telegraph. In the University of New
York. [sic] Martin Van Buren was now President, and all France was
agitated at the prospective arrival of the body of the Great Napoleon
from St. Helena. This is the most remarkable instance of longevity recorded in the annuls of modern times. From the times of Moses, fifteen centuries B. C., till now, only nine individuals have lived to a greater age than the subject of our sketch. The population of the earth is thirteen hundred millions of people, and during the one hundred and forty six of John Long's life, fifty-two hundred millions of the human family have been born, lived and died. Fanny John Long Research |
