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Two locals lived in three centuriesLiving to age 100 is much more common today than it was a century ago, and in fact, it is believed there are around 50,000 persons age 100 or more living in the United States at any given moment.Before 1900 only three persons in Jefferson County are known to have reached that age.The tombstone of one, Robert Kidd, in Magnolia Cemetery reveals that he died in 1890 at age 116, and that in 1890 he was the oldest person in the nation enumerated in that year’s census.Ttoo ladies, Seraphine Peveto of Nome and Seawillow Standly of Port Arthur, lived to age 104, although they lived a century apart.What is most phenomenal is that each woman lived during parts of three separate centuries.Born Seraphine Anna Dubois on May 6, 1797, she was christened at St. Martinsville, La.,but lived some of her early years in New Orleans.Her parents were Pierre Dubois and Juliane D’Artes, and her father was killed at the Battle of New Orleans.Her first marriage was to Benjamin Broussard at Franklin, La., and a yellow fever epidemic about 1830 killed everyone in her family except a son and a daughter.Later her son was killed during the Civil War. About 1835, she met Joseph Peveto, a cattleman, and they were married at Lafayette on Jan. 23,1836.She had four more children by Peveto, namely, Joseph, Jules, Octavia and Emily.Prior to 1835, C.T. Cade of Oasis, Iberville Parish, La., had extensive ranch lands and cattle herds in Southeast Texas, and from 1835 until 1848, Peveto drove an annual herd of Cade’s cattle to the New Orleans market.In 1847 Cade sent Peveto toHometown HistoryW.T. Blocklive at Nome, which became headquarters for the Cade ranches, extending to* the Bolivar Peninsula. Peveto became Cade’s partner in the venture.Seraphine, known only as Sara, lived at Nome from 1848 until she died in 1901.She brought two slaves with her, Mary and Julie, who were her household servants. Joseph Peveto died on Jan. 5,1876, and thereafter Sara lived with her son Jules in the rambling Peveto ranch home until she died on Sept. 28,1901.The Robinson-Peveto house, although much remodeled, became a Texas Historic Landmark in December 1981.Nora Seawillow Whittington, the daughter of Oscar Whittington and Nora Patridge, was bom on the family farm, midway between Port Neches and Groves, on Nov. 26,1897.A fifth generation Texan, Seawillow’s ancestry reads like a page out of a Texas history book. Among her forebears were Elisha Wallis, who founded Wallisville in 1825; James Taylor White, who settled on Turtle Bayou in 1818 as Texas’ first Anglo-American cattleman, and who traded fresh beef to Jean Lafitte’s pirates;Capt. Peter Stockholm, who piloted the earliest steamboats up Sabine River in 1839; Worthy Patridge, an early Beaumont sheriff, tax assessor, and merchant; George Keith, for whom Keith Lake is named; Reuben Barrow and many others.Seawillow lived most of her life in either Port Arthur or Woodville. She was married twice, first to James J. Hunt,and later to George Standly, both of whom preceded her in death. Seawillow died on July 8, 2002, at Oak Grove Nursing Home in Groves, and her remains were interred in Woodville.Seraphine Peveto and Seawillow Standly were two women, who were acquainted first hand with the harshness of the Texas frontier and the rigors of hard work.Most of the time, life for them was largely by candlelight or lamplight; a scrub board, well water and outdoor plumbing existence:Nevertheless they profited from their frontier experience and hard work, and lived to be enumerated in 11 decennial censuses.W.T. Block is a noted historian and provides a weekly column to the Chronicle.
Newspaper Details
Port Neches Midcounty Chronicle
Port Neches, Texas, US
Wed, Jul 07, 2004
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Harvard U.
MA, USA 06 Jan 2025
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