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1904-10-30, The Boston Sunday Globe; tribute to Eunice Kelley Gidley
"MORE THAN A CENTURY OLD Eunice K. Gidley of Dartmouth is the Most Aged New England Friend – Knitted on Her 100th Birthday.
Eunice Kelley Gidley of Dartmouth was 100 years old last August, and is the oldest member of the Friends’ Society in New England, and probably in the world. She was born in Dennis on Cape Cod, August 20, 1804, and was the daughter of Cyrennis and Jerusha Kelley. She attended the public schools, and the Friends’ School in Providence later. Then she taught in the schools at Dennis, Yarmouth, Padanaram, and Bakerville in Dartmouth. In February, 1839, she married Philip, son of Benjamin and Sarah Gidley of Dartmouth, at the residence of her brother, the late Ezra Kelley, on 4th Street in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She is the mother of six children including Job S. Gidley, for many years the Town Clerk of Dartmouth, and a prominent Friend, and Angeline, the widow of Daniel Ricketson, New Bedford’s historian.
Mrs. Gidley now lives with her son, Job, and on her last birthday she received her friends as she sat knitting by the fireside. A granddaughter asked her if she enjoyed good literature as she formerly did, and she replied: “Much more, because I am old enough to understand it better.”
She recited the 23 (rd) Psalm, eight stanzas from Perry’s spelling book of 1809, beginning:
"I sing the almighty power of God, That made the mountains rise. That spread the flowing seas abroad And built the lofty skies"
A manuscript by Daniel Ricketson was read to her; a narrative from her lips of a journey in 1823 from South Dennis to the Friends boarding school in Providence, which occupied a week on account of a snowstorm. She recalled Moses Brown, Enoch Breed, and others named in the narrative, as it was read to her. Her salary, while teaching on the Cape (Cod) was $1 a week.
“I never enjoyed life more in all my days than at present,” she said. “And what has thou to live for at such an age?” asked a Quaker, and she recited the verses commencing: “Here I can read and learn how Christ, the son of God, proclaimed the covenant of grace and sealed it with his blood. Then the sum of all this to thy mind is ‘For me to live in Christ?’” she was asked. “And to die is gain,” she said. Mrs. Gidley has always been particular throughout her life to use “thou” in its right place instead of “thee” as a nominative. A few weeks ago she corrected a North Carolina minister on that point."
Several of her family attained a great age. Her father died at the age of 70, and her mother at 76; but one sister, Lucy Kelley-3237 Sherman, lived to the age of 93. Another sister, Hannah Kelley-4176 Sears, was 95 at her death, and her brother, Ezra Kelley-4177, lived to the age of 97.
While the mother meeting in Sandwich was growing and building its second meetinghouse of 1709, a new nucleus of Friends was forming about eighteen miles southeast around the upper Bass River, in what is now South Dennis. This had been the farm of the Quaker Kelley Family, settled by David O’Killea (d. 1696), a freeman of Yarmouth in 1657, who married about 1670 a Welsh Quaker maid Jane Powell (d. 1711).
Phillip Gidley; Spouse: Eunice Kelley; Marriage: January 27, 1839; Dartmouth, Bristol, Massachusetts, United States[1]
See also:
September 22, 2015, created by Eunice Wilbur-403
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Eunice is 23 degrees from Herbert Adair, 22 degrees from Richard Adams, 19 degrees from Mel Blanc, 23 degrees from Dick Bruna, 20 degrees from Bunny DeBarge, 32 degrees from Peter Dinklage, 21 degrees from Sam Edwards, 17 degrees from Ginnifer Goodwin, 21 degrees from Marty Krofft, 14 degrees from Junius Matthews, 12 degrees from Rachel Mellon and 19 degrees from Harold Warstler on our single family tree. Login to find your connection.
K > Kelley | G > Gidley > Eunice (Kelley) Gidley
Categories: Massachusetts Quakers | Centenarians