Susannah Mushatt Jones, who died in Brooklyn, New York on 12 May 2016 at the advanced age of 116 years and 311 days, was (at her death) the oldest verified living person in the world. Susannah was born at Lowndes County, Alabama, on 6 July 1899, a daughter of Callie and Mary Mushatt. Her parents were African-American sharecroppers and her grandmother was an ex-slave. There have been many Americans over the years who were super-centenarians (living past their 110th birthdays), but with Susannah’s death a door in American history now closes.
She was the last American born in the nineteenth century. The history that Susannah witnessed growing up in the south, and later settling in New York in the early years of the Harlem Renaissance, could no doubt fill many volumes. She married Henry Jones in 1928, but the marriage produced no children and they were divorced in 1933.
Susannah Jones held the title as the oldest verified person in the world after the death of Jeralen Talley last June. The current oldest person in the world is not American but Italian. The title now belongs to Emma Martina Luigia Morano, who was born at Civiasco (Vercelli) in the Kingdom of Italy on 29 November 1899. She also bears the title of last verified person born in the 1800s.[1] Emma was married in 1926 to Giovanni Martinuzzi; they separated in 1938. Emma and Giovanni only had one child, a son who died at six months. It is sad to think the last two living representatives of the 1800s will leave behind them no direct descendants. Emma Morano is in good health and resides currently in Pallanza (Verbano-Cusio-Ossola), Italy.
The second to oldest living person in the world is Violet (Mosse) Brown of Jamaica. She was born at Dunanvale, Trelawny, in British Jamaica on 10 March 1900. Violet possesses a three unique titles. She is the oldest Jamaican in recorded history; she is also the first verified super-centenarian from Jamaica; and she is Queen Victoria’s last living former subject. Violet was married to Augustus Gaynor Brown and had one daughter.
The third oldest person in the world is Nabi Tajima (田島 ナビ), who was born in the former village of Wan (now Kikai Town), Kagoshima, located on the westernmost section of Kikaijima Island in Japan on 4 August 1900. Nabi had nine children, and as of September 2015 has more than 140 living descendants, including great-great-great-grandchildren. This really made me stop and think on my own great-great-great-grandparents. Even if one of my great-great-great-grandfathers lived to the age of 116, he would still have died seventy-four years before I was born.
Turning our attention back to the United States, the oldest American living was not born in America, and is currently the 11th oldest verified person in the world. This title goes to Goldie (Corash) Michelson, a Jewish American-Russian who was born in Russia on 8 August 1902, and immigrated to America at the age of two. Her father was a Russian doctor and sent for his family after settling in America. Goldie graduated in 1924 from Women's College (now part of Brown University) with a degree in sociology. She later would go on to receive her master’s degree from Clark University in 1936.
The oldest verified person alive who was born in the United States is Adele Dunlap, who was born in the Clinton Hill section of Newark, New Jersey, on 12 December 1902. Adele is currently the 12th oldest living person in the world.
During my lifetime I have had the honor to know many people born in the 19th century. This group includes grandparents as well as former Major League Baseball players. It is amazing to think that Emma Morano, Violet Brown, and Nabi Tajima are the last three of that generation in the world. To have lived in three centuries is quite an amazing feat. This accomplishment will not be claimed again until 1 January 2101 when a child of my eldest daughter’s generation will become a super-centenarian, having lived in the twentieth, twenty-first, and the dawn of the twenty-second centuries.
[1] Births in the nineteenth century include all those people born through 31 December 1900.
