She was born into the Damon Family on Damon Hill Road on Dec. 17, 1916, the fourth of six children. Her father was a farmer. The home had two wood stoves. Her mother used one to prepare the family’s meals and the bounty from her large garden. The water was pumped from a tank to the upstairs of the house.

“Everybody had a cistern. We used water from the roof to wash clothes and it (the tank) had to be cleaned out every now and then,” says the centenarian.

She walked over two miles round trip to the brick school in Gerry, which has since been divided into apartments, where she attended first through sixth grades. The students from her town were bussed to Falconer High School when they reached seventh grade.

“I went to school as Elizabeth, but now they call me Nellie,”said Wissman.

Oscar and Nellie Wissman on their wedding day in 1934. Submitted photo

Someone at the school noticed that she brought her lunch wrapped in newspaper and saw to it that she was given a job at the school. She left school at the age of 17.

“Things were bad at our house,” she shared.

While he was still raising his family, her father came down with ALS. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, it is a disease that eventually leads to paralysis. Wissman’s mother took a job even though she still had two young sons at home.

“And there was no (financial) help back then,” said Louella Storm, Wissman’s 85-year-old daughter.

Oscar Wissman, a neighbor who lived “at the top of the hill,” came to help run the farm. Her father died when he was in his early fifties. The farmer’s daughter and Oscar eloped on March 3, 1934. In the beginning, the couple lived just off the road that was named after her family.

“That road was full of Damons,” she said.

The new groom took work on various farms in the area, always living in the Town of Gerry, with the exception of a brief time when they lived in Kennedy. Wissman recalled washing diapers in the creek while they lived on the Cattaraugus County farm.

Eventually, Oscar took a job at Malleable Iron Works and later at Marlin-Rockwell Corporation, where he spent most of his working career.

“He liked to work on cars,” said his widow. “He always took care of our cars.”

According to her family, Wissman was a great pie baker who always used lard in the crust. She did wallpapering jobs and took in ironing when her children were teenagers and later babysat area children. After her own children were grown, she went to work at Sellew Assisted Living of Gerry Homes where she did receptionist work, ironing and whatever was needed. She kept the job for many years.

A few years ago, she was honored at the Town of Gerry Bicentennial celebration for being the town’s oldest living person and served as the parade’s Grand Marshall. This is where she met Assemblyman Andy Goodell.

She has traveled to Denmark and to The Holy Land, but has spent most of her life living on Route 60. In the early 1960s the couple put a mobile home on seven acres of land on the busy road where they had a gas well. In 2007, when she was 91 years old, she left her home to move to an apartment at Heritage Village, which was four years after her daughter had moved there. She lived alone in the apartment until she was 100 and now lives in the assisted living area on the same campus. Her days are taken up with playing two different kinds of card games, solving cryptograms, playing Bingo and Rummikub, which she plays seven days per week.

She earned her GED when she was in her sixties. Sketching, using colored pencils and painting with oils and watercolors have been her passion since Wissman was taken under the wing of her high school art teacher. She remembers staying overnight with the female teacher on at least one occasion. Her family still has much of her treasured artwork.

Over the years she made Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls, over 100 lap robes for clients at the Gerry Home and sock dolls and monkeys for missions. She also crocheted afghans, made seat cushions and some of her family members are still using the quilted, handled tote bags she made for them.

For many years, she collected obituaries from the local newspapers and has organized them in two full albums, which have come in handy to not only her, but to other family members when looking up history.

She stopped driving her car when she was in her early nineties. Her daughter-in-law, Sally Wissman, told a humorous story about the day she was riding with her mother-in-law and she reprimanded a police officer when he pulled her over.

“She got a speeding ticket and she told the officer ‘if you would arrest the crooks in this town instead of stopping old ladies…'”

All of Wissman’s siblings are deceased. Oscar passed away in 1994 after 60 years of marriage.

“You keep your vows,” said Wissman, when asked about the secret to a long marriage.

The couple had three children, two sons and one daughter. Their daughter was given prizes for being 1935’s first baby born at one second after midnight at Jamestown General Hospital. The second baby of the year came ten seconds later. Her brother, Jon Damon Wissman, is deceased. A second brother, Rexford Wissman, resides in Gerry. There are nine grandchildren in the family, 13 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

Wissman is a member of Gerry Free Methodist Church where she has attended her entire life and where she used to count the offering.