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Miss Matilda Emmaline Jenkins Enters Contest For Free Paper
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Miss Matilda Emmaline Jenkins who will be 102 years old tomorrow claims she is the oldest living Tennessean.

Also claiming the honor of being the oldest Methodist in Tennessee, she today entered the contest being conducted by THE BANNER to find the oldst resident in the State.  The person winning the honor will be given a free subscription to THE BANNER for a year.

Familiarly known as "Auntie," Miss Jenkins will be given a big dinner tomorrow by friends and relatives of near Westmoreland where she lives.

She has retained her mental faculties in a remarkable way.  Her hearing and general health are good.  Her sight failed considerably sixteen years ago but she is cheerful and enjoys talking of events and being read to by obliging persons.

She was born on February 20, 1834, in the extreme northeast corner of Macon County on the headwaters of Defeated Creek.  Later the family moved to Scottsville, KY., then to Long Creek and then back to Defeated Creek and then again to Long Creek.  About the time the Civil War broke out, she went to Westmoreland to live. 

Miss Matilda E. Jenkins

She now lives with her neices, Miss Permelia Goad and Mrs. Florence Yates.

When she was born Andrew Jackson was in the White House.  Nashville was a town of little more than 5,566 citizens, and Memphis a mere village of 1,239 residents.

She has lived through four wars of her country, through panic and peril, yet today she is cheerful and her bright, quick little laugh comes readily.

For several years now the Ladies Bible Class of the Westmoreland Methodist Church has presented her a birthday cake, bearing the designated number of candles.  She joined the church here last fall, her membership having long been at another Methodist Church.

Her birthday is always a great occasion in Westmoreland and often

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Friends and Relatives at Westmoreland, To Honor Her With Banquet
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 more than 100 people call on her during the day.  She always receives many presents.  She has a fondness for house slippers and always has a new paid ahead.

She is a vivid conversationalist once started on a subject and can recount breath-taking tales of when witches walked the earth.  Of course, she doesn't believe in witches, yet when she tells these tales she heard as a little girl her voice takes on awe and wonder.

Miss Jenkins says her earliest recollection is of an event that took place when she was 4 years of age--ninety-eight years ago!

She said while members of the family were busy carding and spinning hounds were heard close to the home.  Soon three deer were see in full flight for a mill pond.  The animals plunged into the pond, only their noses were showing.  The dogs jumped in and swam toward the white noses of the deer.  Then, she says, the water was knocked almost as high as a house as the deer sought to strike the dogs with their hooves.

She says she recalls the "May Fresh" of 1842 when streams of the Upper Cumberland reached the highest point in history.

Her eleven brothers and sisters died years ago.  She was the eighth child of Daniel and Susie Pyrant Jenkins.