THE OLDEST MAN IN THE WORLD.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 200, 30 November 1871, Page 7

THE OLDEST MAN IN THE WORLD.

(From the " New York Times.")

In 1814, when Pittsburg was but a village, an old man named Jacob Fonrnais, then aged about seventyyears, came here from Canada, and after a brief sojourn, proceeded to New Orleans in a keel boat. That old man died on the 22nd of July in Kansas City, at the age of 134 years. Fournais was probably the oldest man living. He was a Canadian Frenchman by birth, but for more than half a century was a hunter and a trapper in the employ of the fur company, one of the French voyctgewrh as they were called. He was never sick, and only a -few minutes before he died was walking about the room. His age was entered on the census roll last year at, 134 years, which is as near as from the best evidence it could be fixed. His recollection of important events was very good, and, as he was an illiterate man, his memory held to isolated circumstances, not of history as obtained from reading books. He said he was working in the woods on a piece of land he had bought for himself, near Quebec, when Wolfe was killed on the Heights of Abraham. This was 1 4th September, 1759, and from what he told of his life previous to that he must then have been over twenty-one years of age. Thinking he might have confounded Wo^fe with Montgomeiy (1775) hie was fnlly, but liis recollection of -names and incidents was too distinctto leave any doubt, and the same account had been giving to "others long before. Another event -which lie remembered well, and which he always seemed to look upon' as sc good joke, was that during the occupation of New Orleans by General' Jackson (1814-15 he had been refused enlistment "because he was too old." The old man often told this with great glee. He must then have been about eighty years old. He accompanied the expedition of Lewis and Clark in their explorations of the Missouri and the discovery of the

Columbia River in 1803-7. " For the past seven or eight years the old man's recollections of faces were often at fault, but his memory of events andincidents seemed as strong as ever — like pictures in his mmd — and this retention of ocenrences was the great help in determining his age. The last thirty years of his life were passed in quiet and comfort. He preferred living by himself, and always had his own house, where he kept his pipe and tobacco pouch, and such things as were articles of comfort to him, mostly such as he had from his residence with the Indians—not foigetting his rosary and a few religious pictures which hung over his bed. He was very neat in his person, clothes, housekeeping, and up to the day of his death attended in summer to his tobacco plants and his cabbages. One of his great desires was to see a railroad, and when the" first locomotive came screaming into the bottom near Kansas City, which was in full view of his house, he was nervous as a child until he visited it. He then expressed himself satisfied, saying he " could tell God he had seen a railroad."