b. Kaskasia, Illinois, 1773
d. Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, January, 1866

Joseph Crelie was a Prairie du Chien pioneer and Wisconsin's "oldest man." Crelie — sometimes spelled "Crely" — was born in Kaskaskia, Illinois, on September 7, 1773, and became one of the early settlers in Prairie du Chien in 1792.

Courrier Work

He engaged in the fur trade for the next three decades, traveling widely through the region, and defending Prairie du Chien during the War of 1812. He moved to Portage sometime after 1820. When the U.S. Post Office established its first service in Wisconsin in 1826, he was one of two carriers who transported mail along the Fox-Wisconsin waterway. During the Black Hawk War of 1832, he carried express messages for the American troops and narrowly escaped being killed.

World's Oldest Man

After decades spent mostly outdoors, Crelie became quite elderly in his appearance and around 1850 began to exaggerate his age. He gained some notoriety as the "oldest man in the world" for the next 16 years. In 1850, Crelie listed his age in the U.S. census as 110 years, and in 1860 as 145 years. He was exhibited at Wood's Museum in Chicago in 1864 as an ancient curiosity, where Juliette Kinzie wrote a famous description of him. Though he capitalized on the celebrity of his supposed long life, family members later claimed that he "doubtless innocently fell into the habit, common enough with old men in his station of life, of claiming an age that he had never reached." Crelie died on January 27, 1866, actually aged 92 years, 4 months and 20 days.

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Hansen, James. Unpublished ms. "Ancestry of Joseph Crelie of Prairie du Chien and Portage"; Wis. Historical Collections XII: 400-401