“Isaac Newton Atwood was born in Williamson County, Tennessee, April 8th, 1821, and was therefore 83 years old last April. He was married September 28, 1842, to Miss Hannah Hunt, daughter of Abel Hunt, in Tennessee. His wife was a native of Smith County, Tennessee, where she was born September 17, 1817. She will, therefore, be 87 years old next September, and is at present the oldest living person in Williamson County (in 1904).
The young couple came with team and wagon with a few cooking utensils and sparse bedding and clothing, immediately after their marriage in 1842 and settled in Dade Co., Missouri 40 miles northwest of Springfield.
After about two and a half years they moved into Williamson County, Illinois and took up government land in August, 1845. They deeded 120 acres, from which they have never parted, but still hold title to the most of it in 1904. (The land is in Lake Creek Township north of Marion.)
For sixty years the citizens of Williamson County have counted his ticket for the Democratic Party as regularly as they counted the months, and were never at a loss where to look for Isaac more than for the rising sun or the rivers and streams of their native heath. He and his good wife were “planted” and have flourished as a “Green Bay Tree.”
Six children were born to them, five of whom are still living and settled about them. They are: Edwin Young Atwood, Sarah Elizabeth Atwood, who died March 5, 1865, Isaac Newton Atwood, Martha Jane Atwood, who married Henry Mose, Mary Catharine Atwood, whose husband, John W. Duncan, died not long ago, and Moses Able Atwood.
The old couple is quite energetic yet and can get about pretty well, but are cared for by their children and grandchildren by turns. That duty at present revolves upon a pretty granddaughter. Miss Martha Rutha, daughter of Edwin Young Atwood.
Among the old relics of the past which the Souvenir man unearthed is a cast iron kettle shaped much like an acorn, having four legs, which the young couple used when they went to housekeeping in 1842, and another holding about a gallon which the old lady persists in calling an oven, although a younger generation would insist is a kettle, but in which Mrs. Atwood baked her corn bread, sweet potatoes, coon and possum, among the glowing coals of a wood fire or hanging on a crane in the fire-place, in those happy primitive days, before wealth and fashion had built up impassable barriers between our American Aristocracy and the common people, from whom they sprang.
But the ancient “oven” came from North Carolina to Tennessee and the young couple cooked their first and many a substantial meal in it, and it is as whole and serviceable as it was 75 or more years ago. But it rarely does service now, as the old folks and their offspring have become so “aristocratic” that they use a good cook stove and plenty of the convenient modern utensils with it.
They now count their offspring as five children, thirty-six grandchildren and forty great-grandchildren, thirteen more than Jacob took with him into Egypt. May they multiply in this modern Egypt beyond even good old Jacob, and fill the land with their progeny.”—1905 Souvenir History
Sam’s Notes: Isaac passed away on February 18, 1908 and was buried at Lake Creek. At the time of his death his wife was 90, they had been married 65 years and their children remaining were Moses Atwood and Ed Atwood of Marion Illinois, and Mrs. Henry Moore and Mrs. John Duncan living in the county.
Hannah (Hunt) Newton died on November 3, 1914 at age 97.
It’s pretty likely that neither of these elder ages would impress many people today as it did in 1904 when this article was written and medicine wasn’t nearly as advanced.
(Article from 1905 Souvenir History, WCHS; Ancestry.com: compiled by Sam Lattuca on 04/08/2013)