Gerontius Took, remembered in the Shire as the Old Took, was Thain of the Shire and the head of the great Took clan of Tuckborough. He was Bilbo's grandfather: Bilbo's mother, the famous Belladonna Took, was one of his three remarkable daughters.1,2
The Tooks had a name for being not quite respectable. It was said that one of their ancestors must have taken a fairy wife, and every so often a Took would go off and have adventures. The Old Took's great-grand-uncle was Bullroarer Took, who was so large that he could ride a horse, and who knocked the goblin-king Golfimbul's head clean off with a club at the Battle of the Green Fields.1
Gandalf was a friend of the house, and his fireworks lit the Old Took's midsummer-eve parties. When the wizard turned up at Bag End years later, Bilbo knew him by a gift to his grandfather.1
Not the wandering wizard that gave Old Took a pair of magic diamond studs that fastened themselves and never came undone till ordered?
He lived to be 130, an age the Shire long remembered. His grandson outdid it: Bilbo, born in 1290 by the Shire Reckoning, was 131 when he sailed into the West with the Ring-bearers in 3021.2,3
Sources
Citations name the chapter rather than the page, so they work in any edition. The colour of each note shows what kind of source it is.
- Published story The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as Tolkien published them.
- Appendices Tolkien's own appendices to The Lord of the Rings.
- Published story The Hobbit, ch. 1, “An Unexpected Party”
- Appendices The Lord of the Rings, Appendix C, “Family Trees”
- Appendices The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, “The Great Years”