I’ll start but I’m still in my 20s so I think some of the older folks here will kick my ass :).
I met my great-great-grandfather twice: once when I was too young to remember, and once when I was about 9. This would’ve been 1990. He was 103 at the time putting his birth at or very close to 1887. He died about a year or so later at age 104.
Around the turn of the century, or shortly after, he was on his way out to California by horse-drawn carriage. He broke a wheel in Arkansas, and the town he was in needed a blacksmith (his trade, or maybe his father’s trade), so he decided to stay. He wanted to be a doctor but couldn’t afford to go to school, so he studied on his own, continued smithing, farming, and playing vet and doctor to the town (I doubt the town had a real M.D.; it’s very rural to this day.) He worked his farm and practiced his trade until he was 99 or 100 and had outlived his second wife (he wasn’t divorced; he outlived the first one too), at which time he finally moved into a retirement home. One time when my grandfather went to visit him (mind you, this was my grandfather’s grandfather) when he was in his mid-90s he was just finishing up the farm work for the day. He came and greeted my grandfather on the porch, put his hand to the small of his back and said, "oh to be 75 again! I could work all day and still feel great at the end. "
No friend of a friend or someone who knew someone or a great-uncle who was alive in Poland when you were growing up in Ohio. Someone you knew or at the very least met. An anecdote or two about what they were like is more than welcome.
Let’s see, I met my great-aunt Roseann a couple of times when I was small. She lived to be 100 and would have been born, if I remember correctly, about 1855.
I can’t give much in the way of anecdotes, except that I remember her sitting in a rocking chair, and we pretty much had to shout at her because she was deaf. I do recall she lived in her own home, though.
My great-grandmother, who was born in 1870. She lived to be 98, and “see” the birth of her great-great-great-grandaughter. Six generations living at one time!
I met a 103 year-old woman in 1993 or 1994. That means she was born around 1890. She was mostly lucid and had many interesting stories about her childhood.
That’s really cool. I know the guy I told about in the OP had great-great-great-grandchildren and I think he might’ve had some great-great-great-great-grandchildren :eek:. Most people in my family up until the last generation got married and had kids before they were 20.
My great grandma Brobeck was born in 1871. When I last saw her (about 1966), she still lived in a house that had a hand pump for water in the kitchen sink and an outhouse as the house had no other indoor plumbing.
Great-grandma I last saw a couple months back and god willing will see again, along with all the outlaws, later this summer. We’re getting together to celebrate her hundredth birthday.
Most of my memories of her involve playing at her house while the adults visited. She had toys that were probably played with by my Dad when he was our age, I remember them being sturdy plastic and all sorts of cool things. She had a candy dish on the table that we’d nip candies out of when we thought the adults weren’t looking.
At some point during the visit she’d make coffee and donuts. The donuts she made herself, and had frozen them for when visitors came over. She’d pull them out to dip them in sugar before warming them in the oven. We’d sit at the kitchen table, usually playing with the toothpick holder (it was a woodpecker, you pushed its head down and the beak would stab a toothpick and pick it up… we’d try to see how many we could get on its beak at once…).
I haven’t heard many stories from her, I was told that she came from Germany sometime before the first world war iirc.
She’s forgetful now, and lives in a nursing home. A year or two ago she fell and now she’s in a wheelchair. I try to get to see her when I’m up that way, and I take my son to see her too. Her only great-great grandchild.
My grandmother was 40 in 1928 when my father was born, so that makes her born in 1888.
The farthest back person I’ve met that’s still alive would be my other(maternal) grandmother. She’s 104, and was born 12/17/04, the first anniversary of the Wright Brother’s flight at Kitty Hawk.
My paternal grandmother was in almost perfect health, mentally and physically, until a fatal heart attack at the age of 90. This occurred in 1955. She was born in 1865, just 8 months after Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
I was 25 YO at the time, and her death was hard to take as she had always been one of my favorite people.
It always gave me a thrill to know that she remembered when Grant was President. And was almost 40 when the Wright Brothers made their famous flight. And that the transcontinental railroad wasn’t started until well after she was born. I can remember her telling anecdotes, that she had heard from her parents, about things that General Andrew Jackson had done.
Same here. This thread has actually been swishing around in the back of my mind for years; I wish I’d have gotten around to starting it while David Simmons was still with us.
My maternal grandmother was born in 1892. I think my grandfather was older, but he died ages before I was born. My paternal grandparents were born in the first few years of the 20th century. Just young pups.
I remember one she told about Andrew Jackson when he was President. He was at a dinner party and found, in his desert dish of brandied peaches, the body of a mouse. He carefully and surreptitiously removed the mouse, hiding it in his napkin, as he was such a gentleman that he didn’t want to cause the hostess any embarrassment. Thinking back on it, I’m not sure how the story got out since the mouse was supposedly hidden, but oh well, made a nice little story. There were probably urban legends back then, too.
I also remember her saying, numerous times, that she would never go flying unless Charles Lindbergh was the pilot.
And her definition, “Horses sweat, men perspire, and women glow”.
I had a great-grandmother who was over 100 in the early '60’s. I didn’t interact with her much, but I met her on many occasions. I’ll see if I can get a DOB.
Mid- to late 19th century is the closest I can peg it. My maternal grandmother was born in 1905, so that’s the earliest one I can put an exact year on, but then I met her mother, my great-grandmother. Also met another man I later figured out must have been a great-grandfather, also from the 19th century.
(My paternal grandfather was actually born in 1876, just a couple months before Custer’s Last Stand. He was in his 50s when he had my father; I never met him.)
Now, the wife and I did send mail to Jeanne Calment, who was born in 1875. She was the world’s oldest person for a long time, and we used to send her a card every year. Just thought it a neat thing to do. She never replied, though. Died in 1997 at the age of 122. We simply addressed the envelope: “Jeanne Calment, World’s Oldest Person, Arles, France.” The cards were never returned as undeliverable, so they must have reached her.
I knew my paternal grandmother well, and she was the oldest person I knew well. She was born in 1885 and died in 1984 just a few months short of 100. Three of her children are still alive, including my father who just turned a very young 80 having celebrated his birthday with a ski trip. He swears it is the last.
1910, give or take. I had a great uncle who would have been born around then, but I don’t know his exact age. And Bob Sheppard, the Yankees’ PA announcer, was born that year.
