BIOGRAPHY

Ferguson was born as Ruth Hollingsworth in Fort Worth, Texas, on 5 May 1895. She was the third of eight children born to William Jasper and Mattie (Horn) Hollingsworth. She graduated on her 17th birthday and started teaching at a one-room schoolhouse a few months later, two of her younger siblings being her students. She drove a horse and buggy four miles daily.

For the next half-decade, Ferguson worked in Howe, Texas, and attended summer school at Texas University in Austin, the state’s capital. In 1918, she took up a position teaching junior high in Marietta, Oklahoma. The following year, she married Dudley Hardy, a local hardware merchant. The couple had five children: Andy, William, Mattie, Gayle, and Dudley Jr.

Ferguson was widowed in 1930 when her husband died of a heart attack. Despite raising five children independently, she was able to achieve a B. A. in mathematics and art, and an M. A. degree in secondary education and history. She attended various colleges and universities throughout the Great Depression and the 1930s.

In 1942, Ferguson and her children moved to Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, where she taught junior high geography, history, and mathematics for 22 years until her 1966 retirement. That same year, she remarried to John Holmes Ferguson, whom she had known as a teenager. He died four years later, on Christmas Eve 1970.

From 1954 to 1962, Ferguson spent every summer as a Girl Scouts camp counsellor in the Catskill mountains in New York. Travelling was a lifelong passion of hers, visiting all 50 states and six continents. At the age of 95, she visited China, and the following year, experienced New Zealand and Australia. She was a Sunday school teacher for many years.

There was a history of longevity in Ferguson’s family, with her sister Alda living to be 97, and two of her sons, Andy and William, both living to be nonagenarians. Ferguson outlived all of her siblings, as well as her son Dudley.

There was a history of longevity in Ferguson’s family, with her sister Alda living to be 97, and two of her sons, Andy and William, both living to be nonagenarians. Ferguson outlived all of her siblings, as well as her son Dudley.

RECOGNITION

Following the death of Dora Hand on 2 January 2004, Ferguson became Oklahoma’s oldest known resident. Upon her own death, the title passed to Kristine Brown (1897 – 2007).

Ferguson’s age was verified by Filipe Prista Lucas and Robert Young, and was validated by the GRG on 26 February 2006.

ATTRIBUTION

• Ruth Hollingsworth Hardy Ferguson Find A Grave

GALLERY