Renovo at 150 – The Woman Who Saw it All
by Lou Bernard
You notice that spring chickens are something you only hear about in the negative? It’s always “That person is no spring chicken.” You never hear about anyone who actually is a spring chicken. Apparently you can only comment on spring chickens when the person is not one anymore.
This week, I’m going to tell you about Catherine English, who was definitely not a spring chicken.
In fact, she was said to be the oldest person in the state when she died.
Catherine English’s beginning was almost a fairy tale. She was born on February 22, 1823, in a little log cabin along Kettle Creek, the daughter of Garrison McElwee and his wife. This would have been Lycoming County at the time; she’d have recently turned sixteen when Clinton County was founded. She was forty-three by the time Renovo was founded, and married to Hezekiah English. Though her last name was McElwee when she was born, in most of the documentation she is simply not referred to in that way—She was apparently “Old Catherine English” since she was a child.
When she was young, Indians would stop at her mother’s cabin. Back then, it was still okay to call them Indians—The term “Native American” hadn’t been invented yet. Her parents moved to Hyner, and then her father died while working a lumber raft on the Susquehanna. Her mother moved them to Renovo, which is where Catherine mainly grew up and spent much of her life.
In 1847, there was a flood. A huge flood, one that pretty much wiped out the McElwee family. An article in the Clinton County Times said,”In the big flood of 1847, her family, which lived near the river, lost everything they owned, the house and all its contents being carried down the river.”
She was in the area before Renovo was actually founded, and got to see the community created, and grow into a prosperous area. The Times reported,”Mrs. English saw the building of the Pennsylvania Railroad through the Western section of the county and watched Renovo grow from farmland into a thriving railroad town.”
She even got to vote in the first election after women were granted the right to vote. Catherine voted as a Democrat in that first election, but then never voted again, because she was mostly away from home and there was no point in sitting around waiting for absentee ballots to be invented.
Hezekiah, her husband, died on March 10, 1900. He was seventy years old. Catherine was old, too, but somehow managed to not die anytime soon—She was a lot like the Energizer Bunny, going and going. (She was actually three years older than her husband, who had been born in 1826. In her quest to be the oldest, she had a head start.) She credited her longevity to the fact that she kept up with local news and affairs, always taking an interest in her community. Catherine English would have advocated reading my column every week as a health measure.
She reached a century old in 1923, and her children and friends threw a huge party for her. Which they did pretty much every year after that—Newspaper articles can be found detailing her parties at age 104, 105, 106. Each birthday was something of a triumph, really, though I have to assume that these were not surprise parties—When a woman gets to be over a century old, the fewer surprises she gets, the better.
In her later years, she declined, losing some sight and hearing, which is pretty much expected. She stayed with her children and grandchildren a lot, depending on them. When she reached a hundred and seven, she was known as the oldest person in Pennsylvania, a notable accomplishment.
Catherine English finally died on June 7, 1930. She was a hundred and seven years, three months, and sixteen days old. People of that age always die—It’s like the term “Oldest Person” is cursed or something.
She is buried in the Fairview Cemetery in Chapman Township, next to her husband, who waited there thirty years for her. Catherine English was no spring chicken. She was, however, an important link to Renovo’s history, having witnessed pretty much all of it.
