~~~~~Newspaper Feature~~~~~
Mrs. Lucy Ann Crumbaker Plans to Greet Her 98th Birthday Tuesday
By: William Lightfoot
Mrs. Lucy Ann Crumbaker, nonagenarian, will quietly celebrate her ninety-eighth birthday next Tuesday, July 20, at the home of her son, Sam Crumbaker, 78, former city councilman, Broadway at Hipple Street.
Mrs. Crumbaker enjoys the rare distinction of having been a mother for eighty years, her first born, Phineas, coming into the world in 1857, would be eighty years old if living. She was born July 20, 1839, in Muhlenberg County on the site where now stands Moorman, her father having a cornfield on the exact spot where the L. & N. Railroad crosses the M. H. & E.
In 1856, at the age of 17, she married Christopher Columbus Crumbaker and moved to his home across the line into McLean County near Sacramento. In 1872, the family decided to move to Arkansas but lived there only a few months and returned to Kentucky, settling in Hopkins County near Anton, the most of the family remaining in Hopkins to the present time. Her husband was born in McLean County, December 23, 1822, and died in Hopkins in 1901.
Mrs. Crumbaker is possessed of a deeply inlaid sense of humor and a remarkable memory, easily recalling incidents of slave days and the civil war. Unlike most elderly people, she finds no fault with the goings-on of the younger generation of today, stating there are some good and some bad, as in the days of yore, and that while conditions have changed somewhat since she was young, human behavior in general remains much the same. She attributes her longevity to no one thing, or group of things, nor does she offer any formula to others for a long life.
She is of the opinion that the Presbyterian church, the republican party and Arbuckle's coffee will endure forever. Of her five children, three boys and two girls, only two remain alive. Sam with whom she lives, and George, 76, East Noel Avenue. She has one great-great grandson, the five-year-old Hammond Bowles, of St. Louis, Missouri. Among her various great-grandchildren is James Crumbaker, 16-year-old sandlot southpaw sensation of last year, who is furthering his baseball career at Ponce City, Oklahoma. John Kirtley, Island, speaker of the last house of representatives in Frankfort, is a great nephew.
Source: The Messenger, Madisonville, Kentucky; Saturday, July 17, 1937; Pages 1 and 6.