Mrs. Rosario flies to sun

I had a phone call at work yesterday all the way from Florence, Alabama.

It was my favorite sort of phone call: historic, interesting, and sentimental.

The woman who called me, Margie, was the wife of a man looking for some articles The Intelligencer ran in the late 1960s / early 1970s on Maria Rosario — his great-great-great grandmother.

"This is great!" I thought.

Better still, I found more than she was looking for.

In 1969, Maria Dorothea Rosario, Bedminster Township, estimated herself to be 109 years old. Born in 1860 in Puerto Rico, she came to the United States in 1960 at age 100.

I wasn't immediately able to find an obituary for Maria, though Margie told me that Maria is buried in Puerto Rico.

The last article, dated 1973, concerns Maria's plane ride back to her native country at age 120. It has sort of a sweet title: "Mrs. Rosario flies to sun." Isn't that nice? Very Isabel Allende, right?