Mae Webb Joseph was born in Lewes on Nov. 22, 1903. She moved to Milford in 1928, on the brink of the Great Depression. Today, 105 years later, she’s still an active member of the community, and showing no sign of slowing down.

She celebrated her 105th birthday a week early, on the weekend of Nov. 15, surrounded by five generations of her family – from her daughter, June Grier, to great-great-grandson Dawson Keckler, 7 months old.

“I have a wonderful family,” Joseph said. “They won’t let me get too lazy – they keep me interested, that’s for sure.”

She’s only recently given up making Christmas ornaments by hand, caning chairs and sewing Afghans and pillows for her friends and family – at least for the winter, when the weather irritates her arthritis. Over the years, she’s made hundreds of them, as gifts, for herself and for local institutions like the Milford Senior Center or her church, Milford Presbyterian.

“I’ve been blessed in every way possible to do as good as I do at the age of 105,” Joseph said.

She still keeps her own house, and cooks both for herself and for her friends and family.

“She’s always been an excellent cook,” said Judy Emory, her granddaughter.

Her husband, Roy, owned Joseph Motor, which began as a Ford dealership almost 80 years ago, and became a Dodge and Chrysler outlet about 10 years later. It stayed open until his retirement, and was eventually sold to become the site of Milford’s Salvation Army store.

They bought a home on Southeast Front Street, down the road from the car lot when Roy opened it in 1928. Seventy-seven years, later, she’s still living in the same house, with neighbors who have come to know her like family.

“She had a hand in raising everybody in this neighborhood,” Emory said.

Joseph been raising children all her life, starting with her own younger siblings, who she was more than 10 years older than. Over the years she’s been in Milford, she’s taken in family members and neighbors alike, from her brother when he was seriously injured shortly after her move to Milford, to children – from the neighborhood and from her own family – when their parents needed the help.

The family still owns the house in Rehoboth Beach where she and Roy lived after they got married, and rents it out in the summer months.

Joseph has never shown signs of slowing down when she can help it. Since her 80th birthday, she’s gone on a skiing trip with the family, picked peaches in an orchard, visited her extended family in Ireland, taken the first airplane ride of her life to a vacation in Hawaii and taken a cruise down the Mississippi River, among others.

“I have nothing to complain about – not a thing,” she said.