52 Ancestors: Live Long, Aunt Jennie

This week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge prompt is: Live Long. Time to feature a long-lived ancestor. Any centenarians in the family? My Aunt Jennie may be the longest living ancestor. She lived 94 years. I can not think of any centenarians.

Aunt Jennie is Jennette Sarah Still. She was born 24 January 1888 to Franklin Pierson Still and Sarah Jennie VanHorn in East Fallowfield Township, Chester County. Her older brother, Pierson George Still, is my great grandfather.

She never married. Instead, she graduated from the Women's Hospital in Philadelphia. She was a nurse at Wilkes Barre City Hospital. She was also a head nurse at the Women's Medical, Surgical and Obstetrics Hospital. She also worked in the children's ear, nose throat ward at the Allegheny Hospital in Pittsburgh. After some time nursing here, she went out to Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan where she was a registered nurse.

The 1900 and the 1910 Census show Jennie Still living at home with her parents in East Fallowfield, Chester County. The 1930 and 1940 Census reveal Jennie, employed as a nurse, living in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan.

I am not sure when exactly she went to Michigan to be a nurse, or even why she chose Michigan. She retired at age 75, which would have been 1963. At that time, she moved back home to East Fallowfield Township in Chester County. I always recall Aunt Jennie living in the Harrison House Assisted Living Home in Christiana, Lancaster County. She died there on 18 June 1982.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a weekly genealogical challenge issued by Amy Johnson Crow, of No Story Too Small.

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