OBITUARY

“G. Thaxton, 114; Oldest Resident of Kentucky”

From a staff writer, Los Angeles Times, p. B16

July 9, 2005; Grace Thaxton, the oldest living Kentuckian, who recently celebrated her 114th birthday, has died. She died Wednesday at a hospital in Winchester, KY, after contracting an infection last week Thaxton, whose mother died at the age of 109, was the fourth-oldest person in the United States and the sixth-oldest in the world, according to The Gerontology Research Group based at UCLA. The group, at https://grg.org , tracks people 110 and older.

            Born on June 19, 1891, in Rockland, NY, Thaxton left her home in the Catskill Mountains in 1910 to attend college in Washington, D.C. She moved to Kentucky in 1913 to teach at Millersburg Female College in Bourbon County. A year later, she married Andrew Jackson Thaxton and lived on their farm for 81 years. Her husband died in 1959. Thaxton, whose only bout with a serious illness came during the Flu Epidemic of 1918, drove a car until she was 95 and hooked rugs until she was 103. "She wanted to maintain her independence for as long as she possibly could," Carolyn Wadsworth, one of Thaxton's four granddaughters, told the Lexington Herald-Leader. Thaxton reportedly did not feel old until her only son, Robert, turned 80 in 1995. At 104, Thaxton moved into the Winchester Center for Health and Rehabilitation, where a wing was named for her when she turned 114. "We feel blessed to have had her with us all these years," Wadsworth said.