Talk:Charlie Smith (centenarian)

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Biography

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question

may I ask why these "sources" have no way of being verified about his "true age" Louisvillian 20:48, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the memory.loc.gov site has him at 144 in 1979, so that one's out...actually, that's older than he claimed to be when he died. (Er, something like that) However, there is an interesting comment, that I have added in a sentence or two, and that is that he says he was named after the man who raised him. It sounds lijke a classic case of an elderly person retaining stories told to him as his own memories.99.109.48.230 (talk) 00:31, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Age changing

Mr. Smith changed his age as he went along. In the 1900 census, he is listed as 21 years old which would make him only '100.' By 1910, he is '35' which would make him '105.' It is clear that Mr. Smith began adding years to his age quite early.Ryoung122 07:06, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Where birth records were poor it wasn't uncom on for people to guess and be off by a year or two - take Satchel Paige as an example. What I wonder is, has anyone tried to look up the name he gives to the interviewer in the Lirbary of Congress interview? Not that he's that old, but the Perry Mason fan in me saw the memory.loc.gov site and put together a solution of a poor African-American raised by a fellow who adopted him and gave him the name Charlie Smith, but who - knowing he was adopted - created this story of being sold into slavery based on stories he'd heard from older ex-slaves. Perhaps it is not Charlie Smith, but Mitchell Watkins, whose name we should be looking for. It would also explain why he remember Garfield as the first U.S. president to be killed, if that was like a first vivid childhood memory.99.109.48.230 (talk) 00:31, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Morgan Freeman and Richard Ward played memorable parts in that 1978 PBS TV-Movie base on Charlie Smith's alleged adventures and exploits. There should be a play based on this whimsical character. It also delighrful to learn that both Ward and Freeman were great fans of Shakespeare and produced and starred in several "video" (Public Televison) presentations of his plays including Julius "Caesar" and "Corrilanus". Imagine, randy, old Morgan Freeman as 'Casca', "...Speak hands for me!" --67.86.99.148 (talk) 07:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)Veryverser[reply]