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Margaret Ann Neve

Margaret Ann Neve
Margaret Neve 110.jpg
Born Margaret Ann Harvey
(1792-05-18)18 May 1792
St. Peter Port, Guernsey
Died 4 April 1903
(aged 110 years, 321 days)
Guernsey
Known for Longevity
Spouse(s) John Neve
(1823.01.18-1849, his death)
Children none

Margaret Ann Neve, née Harvey (18 May 1792 – 4 April 1903) was the first recorded female supercentenarian and the second validated human to reach the age of 110 after Geert Adriaans Boomgaard. She lived at St. Peter Port on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel.

Born on 18 May 1792 in Guernsey, as a child, living in Le Pollet, St Peter Port, Guernsey, Margaret Harvey survived a fall down the stairs, which left her concussed for three days. She was the eldest of eight children.

Neve, as she would become, could remember the turmoil that the French Revolution brought to Guernsey. In 1807, Neve set sail for Weymouth with her father, who was involved in merchant shipping and privateering, but a storm caused the ship to land at Chesil Beach. She was educated in Bristol, England, gaining an interest in literature and poetry. In 1815 she went to a "finishing school" in Brussels, becoming fluent in French and Italian and able to converse in German and Spanish. She would read the New Testament in Greek.

Visiting the battlefield of Waterloo, shortly after the battle, with her headmistress, once the corpses had been buried, she picked up souvenirs which she showed to Prussian Field Marshal Blücher, whom she met, when presented to him in London.

Neve met with Charles François Dumouriez, a general of the French Revolutionary Wars, who dubbed her la spirituelle.

Her father John Harvey, who was born in Cornwall in 1771, died on 4 December 1820 at the age of 45, leaving his widow Elizabeth with her remaining children to live in 'Chaumière', a cottage he had bought in 1808. John (1793) married in 1826 and moved to Jersey, then England. Elizabeth (1796) never married. Maria (1799) and Augusta (1801) had died as infants. Thomas (1803) emigrated to the United States. Augusta (1804) married and Louisa (1805) died in 1821.


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