A friend from New Hampshire once predicted that someone in the Derby family would become a centenarian, and Polly Derby was sure the prophecy would apply to her.
Polly was born in 1791 in Lancaster, N.H., when the country was new and the Bill of Rights had just been ratified. When she was 10, the year Thomas Jefferson became president, she moved to Westminster, Mass.
She never married, but at the age of 30 she moved to Maine, living first in Gray, then Temple and finally Wilton. She saw Maine separate from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Confederacy separate from the Union. She lived to see the invention of the typewriter and telephone, baseball and basketball. Through her lifetime, the population of her country grew from three million to 50 million people.
When she reached her 88th birthday, friends and neighbors who had adopted her as their own gathered at her home in Wilton to help “Aunt Polly” celebrate.
Falling the day after Christmas, Polly’s birthday was easy to remember. The next year, the group assembled again for her birthday. The party became an annual event, with more friends and neighbors joining each time. And with each passing year, they wondered, at least to themselves, if that party would be the last.
Along with the prophet, Aunt Polly had other reasons to believe she would live a long life. Her father had lived to be 92, her mother 95, her grandmother 97.
Polly rose at four every morning, even in darkest winter. She was cheerful and outgoing; she loved company. And so every year on Dec. 26, Aunt Polly was the guest of honor at a birthday celebration. Everyone wished her well and marveled at her longevity.
In 1885 Grover Cleveland became president. In 1889 North and South Dakota became states. In 1890 the Women’s Suffrage Association was established. Aunt Polly lived on. She became the oldest person in Wilton.
After the Christmas of 1891, Wilton celebrated Aunt Polly’s 100th birthday. At the time, only five other people in the state had reached the century mark.
The prophecy fulfilled, Aunt Polly passed away the next November.
Luann Yetter teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington. Additional research by UMF student David Farady.
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