Last Person Born In The 1800's Dies

[toobfreak]

The last person known verified to have been born in the 19th Century (1899) just passed away at the age of 117, and is one of the five known oldest people ever. Interesting reading, especially how she lived against her doctor's advice!
She had already lived a pretty full life by the time the world was in the midst of WWII. Think about that.
Supercenturian

 

[Chasing Embers]

Wow, my great grandmother passed when she was 108, but that is just something else.

 

[brian64]

It's amazing to consider the changes she witnessed during her lifetime.
It's also amazing to consider that in just a little over 1.5 more years there will be adults who were born in the 21st century. Before you know it, those of us born in the 20th century will start being seen as relics.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

"Before you know it, those of us born in the 20th century will start being seen as relics."
Thus, it's appropriate to have a pipe in my mouth. Always think two steps ahead.

 

[toobfreak]

William McKinley was president when she was born, and was only the 25th president of the united states. She would live to see 20 more presidents before she died. This lady saw the heyday of the steam locomotive, the telegraph, the advent of the automobile, the development of radio, television, and the telephone. She knew a time when you went out to the well to get water, and out back to use the John and home lighting was gas lamps and only the rich had electricity. She saw the development of the airplane and a time when wars were fought in the skies in open cockpits shooting a machine gun through the propeller as you tried to fly the plane in a dogfight.
She saw the industrialization of America, she was of retirement age by the time of the Vietnam War. She was a grandmother when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and the first Mercury missions were launching into space. She was already older than most people ever lived when the first PC computers were making their ways out onto store shelves for the first time.

 

[mso489]

My wife's grandmother was born in the 1880's and lived to be 99. She was taken west in a covered wagon as an infant and had to learn to walk a second time. She lived in a sod house for a time, and eventually moved back to Missouri to marry. My wife's dad was born in 1899 and was in his late forties when my wife was born, and he dropped out of high school to enlist in the Army during World War One, and served in France in the trenches and suffered his whole life from exposure to poison gas, only lived to be 67 (I think it was). It's difficult to visualize how it would be to reach 117. I think many of the super-elderly just say what they think people want to hear, or develop a contrarian narrative about whisky for breakfast and three cigars a day. But to actually look back on that stretch of history, from horses and buggies to self-driving cars and beyond, must have the sense of multiple lives. You'd have the sense, not just of moving from young to old, but from being one person, to another, to another, far more than most of us.