Grandmothers never tell a lie?

Celena Beauvais Bissonnette Constant was born in St. Cesaire.  Finding her birth record in Quebec was not easy but it eventually was found.  My mother often told me stories about her grandmother who lived to be one hundred years old plus a year or two more.  Yes, some of our ancestors died young but grandmother Celena lived to be more than 100 was always the refrain.  Celena outlived all of her seven children but one, and,  as it was later found out, she did not live to be 100!  She either hoodwinked her son and grandchildren into believing she was 100 in order to get a great big birthday party and have wonderful newspaper write ups extolling her hard working values or she herself just never really knew exactly what year she was born in.
Below is a celebration of her 100 years according to the Syracuse Herald Journal on August 20th, 1941.  (click on the image to enlarge it)

Note the subtitle stating "great grandmother of 34 Still Opponent of Woman Suffrage!!!  Great grandma was certainly a good French Canadian wife and let the man of the house make all the voting decisions while she cleaned and "worked hard all her life".

Then came stories in the Cohoes newspaper, the Troy Record, and the Albany Times Union... Celena was quite a celebrity  in 1941 and noted to be the oldest living person in Cohoes.  The only thing was it wasn't true.

Here is a one picture from the celebration:

Great Grand daughter, Susan Benoit presenting Celena with flowers at her 100th birthday celebration

Detailed story from Syracuse Herald Journal

here's another pic of Celena....

Celena on the left and granddaughter Muriel Etta Wills St Hilaire on the right.  Celena is holding her great grandson Arthur St. Hilaire Junior.  Etta is holding Anne St. Hilaire (later Anne Shannon). 

Here is the baptism record from St Cesaire in Quebec and it is from 1850 -

Ce vingt-un mai mil huit cent cinquante = May 21st, 1850 which is the day of baptism.
The priest states Celena was born the previous day.

Finally, here is Celena's funeral card

Celena's first husband was Joseph Bissonnette who died from Tuberculosis in 1899.  She later married a gentleman, I 'll call Mr. Constant.
If my math is close, Celena's age when she died was 92 years, 4 months,  29 days.  That doesn't add up to 100 years.  I prefer to believe my great grandmother, one of nine children, knew the correct day and month of her birth but never learned her exact year of birth.  She had a great time enjoying all the attention and we can only hope we have some of that genetic material that kept her going strong through her 92 year!

Elizabeth "Libby" Bissonnette Wills and her Thyroid Gland.

In the 1900 Federal Census, she is listed "Libbie", 19 years old  her occupation was "overseamer" in a cotton mill. She could play the organ. She could sew. She was a French Canadian daughter who, on 23 August 1903,  married a man whose parents came to America from Cornwall.  She was Catholic; he was Anglican. They had nine children.  When grandfather didn't bring home the bacon (he spent the paycheck at the corner saloon), she provided for her children by taking in laundry and sewing.  She was the grandmother I never new.  A lovely and attractive girl who aged with the birth of every child, developing a large goiter in the days before there was a medical treatment.

Sometime in midlife she developed a goiter which is visible in the pictures below.  Look at her neck and you can see the goiter.

In the next photo, Libby is standing in the back row, third person from the left.....the goiter is quite visible.

 Chronic Myocarditis was listed as the primary cause of death on her death certificate.  "Exophthalmic Toxic Goiter" was listed as the contributory cause.  The certificate also states she had "partial removal of the thyroid in 1935".

She died on February 1st, 1936 when she was 55 years old.  As far as I know, she had 23 grandchildren; she lived long enough to know 7 of those grandchildren.  

Libbie Bissonnette Wills sitting amongst two of her daughters and six of her grandchildren.

Did Libby have iodine deficiency-induced goiter or did she have what today we know as Hashmoto's Thyroiditis?   Cohoes, New York  was not known as iodine deficient area as was the "Goiter Belt" of Michigan so perhaps Libbie suffered from the later.  If her thyroid gland was removed  in 1935 as her death certificate states and she did not receive the correct thyroid supplementation, she would have deteriorated steadily which she did - succumbing the the early months of 1936.  Supplementation with thyroid hormone first became available in the 1930s.

Today we know regulating under or over active thyroid hormone secretion (Hypoactive or Hyperactive) is a delicate balance with a host of medical interventions for different thyroid pathology dictated by third generation laboratory testing, irradiation for overactive thyroid, or iodine supplementation in geographic areas where iodine is not naturally available.  In 1935-1936, there was still much to be learned about the thyroid and its mysteries.

Libbie standing outside her home at 261 Central Avenue, Cohoes, NY

Here's the complete sequence of stories about illnesses and disease in our families...

Tuberculosis

Québec Cholera Epidemic of 1832

Polio

Smallpox

Tobacco Addiction