Making Sense of Centenarians
Genes and lifestyle help people live through a century
My great-grandmother was born in 1897. She did most of her cooking on a wood-burning stove in her farmhouse in Cable, Wis. When I knew her, she slept on a cotton mattress that she had made herself in the 1940s and kept handmade lace doilies on the arms of all the chairs and sofas.
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When I asked her to tell me what it was like living in the Roaring ’20s and the Depression, I expected her to regale me with stories of wild dancing and ruined investors jumping from skyscrapers. Instead, Elizabeth Morey told me of logging, raising chickens, and cooking on a wood stove–stories typical of people living in rural Wisconsin during those times.