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- Watertown Daily Times - March 12, 1987
Jefferson County, N. Y.
WOMAN, 106, DEAD IN CITY.
Carrie E. Bickelhaupt, 106, the oldest resident of the Samaritan-Keep Home, formerly of 401 E. Hoard St., died at 12:45 p.m. Wednesday at the home. Mrs. Bickelhaupt had been one of the first residents into the facility in April 1973.
She outlived her husband, her two children and her five brothers.
Mrs. Bickelhaupt was born in the Philadelphia- Antwerp area in 1880, when Rutherford B. Hayes was president and Queen Victoria was ruling Britain.
She was a year older than Helen Keller, who lost her sight as a young girl but was graduated from Radcliffe College and became an activist for the blind.
When she was 10, Ellis Island began accepting immigrants in the New York City harbor.
Mrs. Bickelhaupt lived through five wars, was alive while 22 different presidents were in office and saw women gain the right to vote in 1920, the stock market crash in 1929, the drop of the atomic bomb in 1945, the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963, the first man on the moon in 1969 and the Challenger shuttle explosion of 1986.
"To me, she was pretty wonderful", said her 59-year-old granddaughter, Betty Campagnano, 401 E. Hoard St., wife of Thomas Campagnano.
Mrs. Campagnano, daughter of the late Mrs. Arthur (J. Pearl) Schneider, Mrs. Bickelhaupt's daughter, described her grandmother as a dedicated farm woman, who spent her mornings milking cows and her afternoons working in the fields, and still found the time to bake cookies and pies when her grandchildren came to visit the family farm.
Mrs. Bickelhaupt also enjoyed embroidering and crocheting, her granddaughter said.
Mrs. Campagnano said she was not sure what her grandmother's secret to such a long life was, but said Mrs. Bickelhaup had been able to maintain her good health all her life until the past few years.
A spokesperson at the Samaritan-Keep Home said Mrs. Bickelhaupt had attended the social functions in the facility for as long as she was able, and seemed to "really enjoy herself."
The funeral will be at 2p.m. Friday at the Fox Funeral Home, Hammond, with Rev. Everett Prudhomme, pastor of the Hammond Presbyterian Church, offficiating. Spring burial will be in Redwood Cemetery.
Calling hours are from 7 to 9 this evening and from noon to 2 p.m. Friday.
Surviving are four grandchildren, Mrs. Campagnano, Mrs, Francis (Audrey) Dorr, Sterling, Daniel Bickelhaupt, Hammond, and Donald Bickelhaupt, Tully; seven great-grandchildren, and three great- great-grandchildren.
A son Herschel, died in 1982, and her daughter, Mrs. Schneider, who was also a resident of the home, died Oct. 25, 1985. Five brothers, William, Addie, Claude, Edward and James Murphy, all died previously.
Mrs. Bickelhaupt was born in the Philadelphia/Antwerp area on Dec. 14, 1880, daughter of William and Sarah Callery Murphy. She worked on her parents' farm and attended school in Redwood until her marriage to Leonard Bickelhaupt on March 12, 1902, at the home of her aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Murphy, Hammond.
The couple lived on a farm near Redwood and later moved to a farm on Route 37, in the Hammond-Redwood area, which they owned and operated for many years.
They retired from farming in 1955 and moved to Watertown, where they lived with their son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Schneider. Mr. Bickelhaupt died June 18, 1956.
Mrs. Bickelhaupt entered the Samaritan-Keep Home in 1973.
She was a member of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Redwood, and the Redwood Kirkland Grange.
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1880 - 1987 (106 years)