James Carr (1814-1915)

CARR, WHITE

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 4/18/2022 at 18:32:13

From Nevada Representative September 3, 1915 (page 1)

NEVADA LOSES ITS CENTENARIAN

DEATH OF JAMES CARR

His Age was 100 Years, 10 Months and 24 Days.

James Car, for more than fifty years a resident of Nevada or its vicinity, died Wednesday morning, September 1, 1915, in very great fullness of years and for no reason in particular save that a constitution that had already survived for a most extraordinary term of life, finally reached its limit. His death occurred at the home of his son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel White, i this city, where on a beautiful October day of last year his relatives, friends and townsmen had gathered to do him honor upon the centennial of his birth and where his funeral is conducted this, Friday afternoon.

Mr. Carr was a native of Kentucky, where he was born on October 8, 1814. His parents removed when he was young to Indiana, where he grew up, married and lived until he was about fifty years of age. Then, in 1864, he emigrated to Iowa and settled in the Hickory Grove neighborhood a few miles southeast of Nevada. There he was followed by others of his family, including his brother Annanias, who was about four years and few months his junior and who also lived to a very great, although not quite so great, an age. In the new settlement Mr. Carr readily gained recognition as a man of high personal worth and fixedness of principles, and among other things it is told of him that when the coming of the Northwestern invited a diversion of the habitual route of travel eastward of Nevada from the old stage road by way of Johnson's Grove to a new location along or near the railroad, it was he that went ahead of the assembled countryside and blazed the trail for what in now a section of the Lincoln highway.

In the course of time Mr. Carr quit active industry himself. Mr. and Mrs. Carr continued to live on the old home farm with the Whites, until about a dozen years ago they all moved to Nevada. In the home here Mrs. Carr died in 1909, after they had celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary; and here the old man continued to live, inspired manifestly in the most of his latest years by the ambition to see and celebrate his centennial birthday. In the last year of his first hundred he was seen frequently on the street, and though once in the summer-time his condition seemed to be precarious, yet he had no notion of quitting then and did not quit. So he came to to his centenary, one of the few really fine days of last October, and the broad new veranda at the White home and the lawn outside afforded a delightful setting for the occasion, when the moment came to extending to him the great honors of the day. Upon this occasion he did not have much to say; in his modest life he had not become accustomed to attentions such as he was then receiving; but he was manifestly very happy, and it was easy to see that it had for him been worth while to live so long to see such a day.

After the celebration Mr. Carr was not so often seen and we doubt if he had so much of a motive for keeping up his nerve and strength. Still he got through the winter pretty fairly; but this summer has for him been different from other summers, and with its end he has gently faded away. He leaves to revere his memory a numerous tribe, and a name which they and others can well afford to honor.