Article October 12, 1907 Issue

OCTOGENARIANS

F. J. RYAN

The many references in newspapers to Mrs. Eddy's age has awakened a general interest in others of advanced years. The following news item appeared in all the San Francisco daily papers of the 3d instant:—

"San Jose, Sept. 2,—It became known to-night that Augustus L. Rhodes, the venerable judge of the superior court in this county, had sent his resignation to Governor Gillett, to take effect to-day, and that the resignation was accepted. Governor Gillett has not appointed his successor. Judge Rhodes resigned because of his advanced age—eighty-six years."

There are in Stockton, Cal., where the writer lives,—a city which has a little less than thirty thousand inhabitants,—several men who are as old or nearly as old as Judge Rhodes. The eldest of these is George W. Trahern, born in 1815, who until within a few days ago, when he was hurt in an accident, managed his large ranch. The next in point of seniority is John Quinn, who is nearly ninety. Within two years he conducted a paint and wall-paper business and built a three-story business building, superintending the work in person. The third is Andrew Wolf, aged nearly eighty-seven, who within two years superintended the erection of four or five business buildings and is now engaged in remodeling another. He is more active physically than the average man at sixty and is quick, keen, and alert in looking after his interests. A fourth is Dr. Christopher Grattan, a retired physician, of the same age as Mr. Wolf, viz., eighty-six years and eight months. He is not active physically, being very heavy, but is active mentally and attends to what business he has. His brother, John Grattan, four years his junior, has been regarded as a most efficient nurse in cases of small-pox for half a century. Whenever it has become necessary to send a patient to the infection hospital, during the last ten years, Mr. Grattan has always been called upon to take charge. So efficient is he that the superintendents of the county hospital, who have been physicians during that period, left him in complete charge of both patients and treatment. He is physically as active as most farmers of fifty years, walks as erect and firmly as if he had been a trained soldier, though he has during most of his life in California done much hard work on his ranch. There are on the register of voters in this (San Joaquin) county nearly one hundred men over eighty years old who are farmers, but I do not know them personally as I do all of those mentioned.

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