
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 4, 1993                   TAG: 9306040190
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG                                LENGTH: Short

WOMAN'S DEATH RAISES AGE DISPUTE

The death of Winnie Vaughn Spence this week at Eastern State Hospital has raised questions about whether she was one of the oldest people in the United States.

A death certificate filed with the state Department of Health said Spence was born on Jan. 18, 1876, making her 117 years old.

But her relatives are questioning the date's validity.

"I didn't know she was that old," said Luvinia Ervin, the dead woman's 70-year-old daughter and only child. "Her mother raised me. My mother was sick before I was born and they had to put her in the hospital."

Ervin said other relatives believe her mother was no older than 95.

Spence apparently was despondent over the breakup of her marriage to Harry Spence and "used to wander off," Ervin said.

"I think she almost liked to drown herself a few times," she said. "They had to put her in the hospital."

Spence was born in the Hickory area of Chesapeake, one of 16 children of Emerson and Hannah Vaughn. All of her brothers and sisters are dead now except for one, Joseph Vaughn, who is in his 90s and lives with his wife in Philadelphia.

Ervin, who also lives in Philadelphia, remembers occasional childhood trips with her aunts and uncles to visit her mother, who she said has lived in hospitals for as long as 60 years.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, people who live beyond the age of 113 are extremely rare and there has never been proof of anyone living past their 120th birthday.

by CNB