Black Woman, Oldest Person Alive

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>At 114, US woman is world's oldest person</font size><font size="4">
A Connecticut woman born to former slaves in the decades
following the US Civil War has become the world's oldest person,
at 114, according to Guinness World Records</font size></center>

Emma Faust Tillman rests as her daughter,
Marjorie Tillman helps prop her head back,
at the Riverside Health and Rehabilitation
in East Hartford, Conn.


Emma Faust Tillman, born near Greensboro, North Carolina, on November 22, 1892, became the world's oldest person on Wednesday, following the death of Emiliano Mercado del Toro, of Puerto Rico, Guinness said on its Web site.

Longevity is common in Tillman's family. Though none of her 23 siblings have matched her 114 years, three sisters and a brother lived past 100, her great-nephew John Stewart Jr., said on Thursday.

"At 114, she's lived a good, honorable, straight life," said Stewart, who is 76. "Her comment is always, 'If you want to know about longevity and why I lived so long, ask the man upstairs."'

Tillman, who lives in the Hartford, Connecticut, nursing home she moved to at the age of 110, was not available for an interview.

"Sometimes, she doesn't feel like talking," Stewart said. "But when you're 114, you can call your own shots."

Tillman never smoked, drank or wore eyeglasses, Stewart said.

Karen Chadderton, administrator of the Riverside Health and Rehabilitation Center, where Tillman lives, said until a few months ago Tillman spent much of her time caring for an ailing roommate more than 20 years her junior, who has since died.

"About a month ago, she started feeling less energetic," said Chadderton. "During the morning she has energy, she's up and about, in a wheelchair, but in the afternoon, once she goes to sleep, she doesn't want to be bothered."

According to the International Committee on Supercentenarians, there are currently 86 people aged 110 or older alive in the world today. Eighty of them are women.

The world's next-oldest resident is Japan's Yone Minagawa, born in 1893, according to the ICS. Guinness World Records said it is still investigating that claim.

Source: Reuters

http://www.thanhniennews.com/worlds/?catid=9&newsid=24704

 

[Spectrum]

Just posted this on the main board..RIP

 

[QueEx]

6 years later . . .

Oldest U.S. citizen for two weeks
dies at 114 years old

Mamie Rearden of Edgefield, who held the title of the oldest person in the
country for about two weeks, died Wednesday at a hospital in Georgia.
​

New York Daily News

A 114-year-old South Carolina woman who was the oldest living U.S. citizen has died.

Two daughters say Mamie Rearden of Edgefield, who held the title as the oldest person in the country for about two weeks, died Wednesday at a hospital in Georgia.

Sara Rearden of Burtonsville, Md., said Saturday that her mother broke her hip after a fall about three weeks ago.

Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group said Mamie Rearden's September 1898 birth was recorded in the 1900 U.S. Census. The group, which verifies age information for Guinness World Records, listed Rearden as the oldest living U.S. citizen after last month's passing of 115-year-old Dina Manfredini of Iowa.

Rearden was more than a year younger than the world's oldest person, 115-year-old Jiroemon Kimura of Japan.
​

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...114-years-old-article-1.1233844#ixzz2H93HNR86



Lex18
Lexington, Ky

"My mom was not president of the bank or anything, but she was very instrumental in raising a family and being a community person," said Sara Rearden, her youngest child. "Everybody can't go be president of a bank or president of a college, but we feel just as proud of her in her role as housewife and particularly as mother and homemaker."

Mamie Rearden, who was married to her husband Oacy for 59 years until his death in 1979, raised 11 children, 10 of whom survive, Sara Rearden said. She lived in the family homestead with a son and a daughter on land that had been in the family since her father's accumulation of acreage made him one of the area's largest black landowners.

Her father sent her off to earn a teaching certificate at Bettis Academy on the far side of the county, spending an entire day on a loaded wagon to reach the school along dirt roads, her daughter said. She taught for several years until becoming pregnant with her third child.

In the mid-1960s at age 65, when some settled into retirement, she learned to drive a car for the first time and started volunteering for an Edgefield County program that had her driving to the end of remote rural roads to find children whose parents were keeping them home from school, Sara Rearden said.

Mamie Rearden always counseled that her children should treat others as they wanted to be treated and that included never gossiping or speaking ill of others. When asked about a preacher's uninspiring sermon, her daughter recalled her mother saying: "'Well, it came from the Bible.' She never would bad-mouth them."
​

READ MORE AT: http://www.lex18.com/news/sc-woman-oldest-living-us-citizen-dies-at-114/