For 87 years, quite likely a record for a weekly newspaper column, Mary Peyton Meyer kept track of just about anything that went on in Frogtown, a largely German-Lutheran farming community southeast of Vandalia, Ill.

Relatives visiting from out of town? That would be a column item. So would details of a quick shopping trip to Vandalia. Church socials were sure to get a prominent mention.

“Just nosy news,” said Belinda Harpster, secretary at St. Peter Lutheran Church in St. Peter, Ill., a regular source of Meyer’s who is taking over the “Frogtown” column for the Vandalia Leader-Union. “Everybody read it.”

Meyer, 102, died May 22 at Fayette County Hospital in Vandalia, about 70 miles northeast of St. Louis.

Meyer, who started her column in 1921 while still in high school, was still filing her handwritten items on half-sheets of typing paper until earlier this year, said Dave Bell, publisher of the Leader-Union. Her most recent salary was $15 a week.

“I think it was a feeling of obligation to the community down there,” Bell said of Meyer’s tenacity in turning out columns. “She just had a mission of letting people know what was going on in their community.”

A farmer’s wife and longtime schoolteacher, Meyer gained national exposure in 1990 after a feature story on her and her column appeared in the Chicago Tribune, leading to an appearance on the “Tonight” show.

Spunky and quick-witted, she bantered easily with Johnny Carson, who read some of the seemingly trivial items from her column for laughs.

The former Mary Peyton was born in Fayette County and taught in the county for 42 years. She married Clarence Meyer in 1931; he died in 1969. The couple had an adopted son, who also preceded her in death.

She was fond of red clothes and bright red nail polish, and dashed around the countryside in a small red car.

“She was hilarious,” Harpster said. “When pastor would go to visit her at the boarding house where she was living, she was never there. She’d be out shopping or getting a manicure.”