On July 1, 1926, sixty-three years to the day of the start of the Battle of Gettysburg, Keziah Elizabeth Thomas Kuff passed away. She was hailed as the oldest resident of Gettysburg, possibly the oldest in the United States, maybe one of the oldest people ever to live. The headline of the day suggested she was 122 years old, and her death certificate gave as her birthdate December 8, 1803.

It is an official government record, so it must be true, right? Weellllll . . .

Keziah reveled in her status and did nothing to diminish the legend. She alleged that she remembered the first steam engine going into operation (which happened in 1832). She couldn’t recall the War of 1812, but she could remember her parents talking about it. She vividly recalled the Battle of Gettysburg with various details.

According to the headline and people who knew her, she credited tobacco with her long life. She chewed it regularly and smoked occasionally.

Were all the legends true? Almost certainly not. The 1850 Census shows her living with her parents and siblings, and she is listed as 15 years old, putting her birth somewhere between 1834 and 1835.

A decade later, she had married William Kuff, and the 1860 Census put her age at 26. In 1880, still married to William, she was listed as 46. In 1900, her husband had died, and she recorded herself as 56. 1910, she passed herself off as 50 to the Census takers. So somewhere between 1880 and 1900, she began moving her birthdate forward in time, but as she neared the end of her life, she moved it back. And given that she was 92 at the time of her death, hardly anyone in Gettysburg could challenge her on it.

A lifelong resident who was born free in the town, she grew up in the log house of her birth on West High Street. She died in the house next door to that log cabin. She had four daughters, two of which died in infancy and one later in life. Her daughter Elizabeth was the only child to reach late adulthood.

Whatever her actual birthdate, the tobacco-chewing old woman left behind memories and legends that persisted for decades.