Mrs. Ruth Porter Watson, 105, Casts Absentee Ballot, November 1920

Mrs. Ruth Porter Watson of Rutherford county, "dean of the college of Confederate matriarch" with three living sons veterans of the Confederacy, cast her ballot in the presidential election Tuesday. Mrs. Watson, who last month celebrated her 105th birthday, was the beneficiary of the state's "absentee voting law." She was not able to go in person to the polls, but sent her ballot by her son, Tom I. Watson, and it was one of the millions which on that day was cast and counted for James M. Cox for President and Franklin D. Roosevelt for vice president. When Tom Boxt of the Greensboro Daily News staff visited the Watson home during the early part of this year he found Mrs. Watson in possession of her full faculties of mind and body. And today she retains those faculties. She gets about the house and takes a keen interest in affairs, but her 105 years forbade that she make a journey to the polling booth Tuesday and her ballot was sent to be cast by her son. It will be recalled that Mr. Bost wrote a delightful story of his visit to Mrs. Watson and in sketching her 104 years he wrote: "'Oh, you mysterious girls,' once wrote J.M. Barrie. 'When you are 52 we shall find you out.' Twice Mrs. Watson has been fund out at 52. She was found out at that age when her state was coming from devastating war and reconstructing itself. She found out again at 104 when reconstruction of the world was in order. She spans Napoleon and the kaiser. She was born as the Frenchman began to serve the sentence imposed upon him for having vexed God, as Victor Hugo puts it. She was able to celebrate the downfall of another archangel of war who fancied that he had taken God into partnership with him." (From the front page of the Monroe Journal, Nov. 5, 1920)