The METHUSELAH OF 

MILLEDGEVILLE, DUBLIN,

AND THE WORLD  

Jackson Pollack 

When Jackson Pollack, an super - centenarian of Milledgeville and former resident of Dublin died, everyone knew that Pollack was a very old man.  Just how old was this ancient story teller, who died on September 7, 1995, a quarter century ago this week.

As Pollack began to grow to be more than 110 years, he began to talk to newspaper reporters on his life as a young man and life as one of the oldest people around.

Pollack claimed to have been born on Christmas Day in 1866, or was it three years later in 1869.  Born on a farm near Hawkinsville,  Pollack never married and never had any children. A a son of slaves, Jackson,  who continued to farm near Finleyson, Georgia, about half way between Hawkinsville and Rochelle, Georgia to the south.

Beside toiling in the hot fields of South Georgia, Pollack told the story of the time he carried the United States mail to support his baker’s dozen of siblings.  When the Spanish American War came along in 1898 and World War I, some two decades, later Pollack stated that he served in the U.S. Army.  

       Jackson Pollack lived in a Dublin boarding home while in his into his second hundred years of life on Earth.   Pollack was shanghaied and relocated to Central State Hospital in Millegeville, Georgia, where he lived until his death.  It has been said that his Dublin neighbors were afraid that he may injured living all alone in Dublin. The safety of others became a concern when Pollack grabbed his trusty shotgun and fired it at neighbors, who he thought were there to steal his social security check. 

Robert Byrd of the Los Angeles Times in a 1990 interview with Pollack wrote, “He is 6 feet 9 inches tall with cottony white hair.  He is a healthy man especially for man who is 123. He likes starched shirts, hearty breakfasts, and smoking a pipe, detests the hospital where he lives and chats happily with people who stop by to see him.”

As for what else makes him happy, Byrd commented, “ He loathes most hospital food, except he does enjoy eggs, sausage, grits and coffee for breakfast.

Pollard was known to never have drank any liquor but smoked only Prince Albert Tobacco from a can since he was eight years old. 

Ann Hardie, of the Cox News Service, observed in 1991 that Pollack was rather crotchety and refused to talk to people. He did volunteer to say tht Franklin Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter were his favorite problem.  As he lived into this 13th decade, Pollack got tired of the pitching of the Atlanta Braves.  Unfortunately, the old Braves fan missed the Atlanta Braves first World Series in 1991. 

Life at 125 was seemingly mundane for Jackson Pollack.  Hardie wroted, “ He usually sits in lazy boy chair, smokes his pipe, look out the window and watch more hours go by.”

  “I’m glad God spared me to be this old,” Pollack asserted in one of his last major interviews.   

Jackson Pollack died on September 7, 1995 at the Central State Hospital in Milledgeville.  His body was buried in the family plot in the Mount Air Baptist Church near Hawkinsville. 

Twenty years after Pollacks death, the Calment Project was still investigating the old man’s claims.  Researchers found that  Alyce Friend, from the Georgia Office of Aging, attempted to validate Pollock’s claim, with limited success. There was a marriage record in Pulaski between Jackson Pollack and Nancy Simmons on November 19, 1885, which would tend to fit Pollack’s age.  A Jackson Polloack is enumerated in the 1940 Census of Florida as being 70 years of age, born in Georgia, and living in the a Florida State Hospital in Gadsden County. By the way, Pollack lived in the state hospital as Carrie White, who at the documented age of 115, was the oldest living person in the world.   The 1945 State Census states that a 74-year old Jackson Pollock as a laborer in Saint Cloud, Florida.

Although there a few claims to prove that Pollock lied about his age, there are still doubts about his true number years, due to the lack of a birth certificate, census records, and military records.  Accurate and complete records of the vital statistics of African Americans were scant at best.  Even somewhat reliable census takers did not take down the correct information or failed to find migratory farm workers. 

Perhaps it will never be known just how old Jackson Pollack lived to be.  Was he 125 going on 126 as his social security records showed  or was he three years older at 128?

Stories of extra long lives are often rebuttable. But in this case, why not give the old man credit for being the oldest man ever.  After all,  government records are “never wrong.”

By the way, if Jackson Pollack did really live to be almost 126 years old,  he would have be documented as the oldest living man on Earth, not counting the ancient ones in the Bible.  Ironically, Laurens County could claim that in addition to being the home of the oldest man ever, it was also the home of one of the oldest living women in the world, Jerelean Kurtz Talley, once the oldest living woman in the world and a native of Montrose, lived to be 25 days beyond her 116th birthday Mrs. Talley remains the 21st oldest person ever and the 8th oldest American ever.