The oldest person of whom I have both a documented age and a personal history with was probably my maternal grandfather, who was born in 1905. My paternal grandparents were slightly older, with my grandfather born in 1903 and my grandmother born in 1904, but they both died 30 years before I was born. I doubt I have met anyone who was born further than 1900, certainly no one I remember clearly.
My maternal grandmother was a spring chicken, born in 1918, and though I knew her longer sadly a stroke had robbed her of speech by the time I was a child, so she was never able to share her stories. My mother clearly remembers visiting her maternal grandparents when she was a girl in the 1950s; she remembers they had a house with a tin roof, and the quilts her grandmother (my great-grandmother) made by hand. Her grandfather and grandmother were born, respectively, in 1893 and 1897. They missed meeting me by a handful of years, dying in the late '70s before my birth in 1984.
A bit off-topic, but what the hell: I keep pretty exhaustive genealogy records, and my longest-lived ancestor was born in 1824 and died in 1920. That’s 96 very pivotal years: John Q. Adams was president when she was a little girl. Lincoln was assassinated when she was 41. She lived to see light bulbs, automobiles, and flying contraptions called airplanes. In her last years she knew of Prohibition and World War I.
A friend of my grandmother’s, born in 1889 and died in the early 1990s. Her sister was either slightly older or slightly younger; they both lived to over 100. My grandmother grew up in a very small town in western Massachusetts and these two women knew her grandparents and great-grandparents. I was too young to make the connection at the time or I would have pressed them for all the information I could.
My longest-lived ancestor was roughly contemporaneous: my great-great-grandfather, 1831 - 1922. Jackson to Harding, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, losing his home but (fortunately) none of his family in the biggest flood disaster until Johnstown, WWI and Prohibition. I hope I live that long myself.
It would have to be my grandmother, who was born March 27, 1882. She died in 1975. Her father was alive at the same time I was, but I never got to meet him. He was born on July 17, 1858 and died in 1952. I’m hoping that I inherited their longevity.
Same here. Not even so much for the scared of dying factor (it does scare me sometimes, but it’s gonna happen), but for the cool factor of seeing so much change. I hope smoking cigarettes from my early teens to my mid 20s didn’t ruin my chances.
Although I may have met (or more accurately, been met by) people born earlier, I have several distinct memories of my father’s mother’s mother, who was born in 1882. My parents were married in 1958, and the family lore states that at Christmas that year, Grandma Michl (as we all called her) proclaimed how glad she was to see Lawrence (my father) “finally” married (he was all of 24 years old). The next year, I was a baby, and Grandma Michl said it was “so nice that I got to see Robert born before I died.” Every Yuletide was “her last” until she finally died in September of 1971 at the age of 89.
My mother’s father lived to 91, longer than anyone else I’ve known well, but he was born in 1909.
I met my great-grandmother a few times before her death when I was four. She was born in Sicily in 1893 and immigrated to the US in 1911, then lived in New Jersey, Ohio and California. I only remember a few things about her: she was a big lady, seemed really old to me, and was always in her rocking chair. She spoke English with a very strong accent and was kind of gruff and feisty. That’s about it.
I knew my dad’s mother, born 1902, very well. She was just a nice old lady who never spoke ill of anyone, very religious and gentle. After she died I learned more out about the horrible life she had until she was about 60, and looking back, she was more beaten-down than gentle.
I have a great-aunt still living (a daughter of the above great-grandmother) who was born in 1918, which is not that long ago, but I had a long conversation with her a few months ago about her early life. She told me about riding streetcars, working in her parents’ bakery and macaroni shop, parties they used to throw in the macaroni shop (because it had a big open space), life during the Depression (“some nights all we had to eat were fried potatoes”), and a lot of other stuff that would only be significant to the family.
My oldest living relative was born in 1926 and I love talking to her. I didn’t grow up near her but she came to visit once and I saw her at the family reunion every year, and in the last few years we’ve started emailing each other a lot. Lots of stuff that only matters to the family, as you say. The youngest sister of the guy I wrote about in the OP was my oldest living relative until she died last year in her late 90s, but I didn’t know her.
The earliest DOB for anyone I’ve ever met would have to be in the very early 1900’s, and would either be my great-grandmother, who was probably born right around the turn of the century (she passed away in her 70s in the mid-70s), or my great-Uncle Robert, who lived to be something like 97, and passed away around 2000, (I seem to remember 1904 as his birth year).
He was an interesting guy to talk to- he was barely too young for WWI and too old for WWII, so he was an adult for most of the Great Depression, and an old man by the 60s He saw an awful lot of change, that’s for sure!
Per family lore, when I was a baby my father set me in the lap of an old woman who was born a slave. Per her tombstone she was born in 1864 and died in 1968. She was a lifelong friend of my great-grandmother (who lived from 1863-1963) and who my siblings vaguely remember. Obviously I don’t remember her.
The oldest person I met that I can remember was my great uncle who was born in 1881. (He was born 2 months premature and it was so foregone a conclusion he would die that his grandfather actually bought an infant coffin for him, but he made it to 100.)
The oldest person I knew very well was my great-aunt Carrie who I lived with until I was 20. She and her twin sister, Kitty, were born in 1889. Kitty died in 1982 after which Carrie moved in with us.
I have a picture of me with my great grandmother, but I was very young at the time and don’t remember much. She would have been born in 1892, since my brother was born on her 100th birthday. She passed away a couple months later, IIRC.
My oldest living relative is my grandfather, who was born in 1915. He has all sorts of stories about Model T’s and the depression. He remembers when oil was 40c a barrel. Our family has a (probably apocryphal) story about him being interviewed for jury duty on a drug case and getting sent away for telling them that when he was in high school, pot was legal and alcohol wasn’t and he’s seen everything come and go.
Cunctator, if you like history links, this is just for you: Actress Drew Barrymore’s great-aunt Ethel Barrymore, also an actress, could recall that as a child she served tea to an interesting redheaded man whose name was Oscar Wilde.
My much loved maternal grandfather was born in 1866.
My paternal grandfather that I never had a chance to know was born in 1844. He knew Jesse James. This grandfather died eighteen years before I was born.
Gee. Six degrees of difference between Jesse James and Ted Bundy.
I’ll have to check the old family records to find the birthdates of some of the old-timers I knew as a small child, but in the meantime I’d like to share this story just because of the impact it had on me at the time.
In the early 1980’s I was working in a retail establishment and in the process of concluding a transaction with a nice elderly woman. She was paying for her merchandise with a check, so being the good little clerk that I was I asked to see her driver’s license. Her birthdate was listed as something along the lines of 8/23/92 and I remember thinking, “What?! That can’t be right! There must be some mistake! Oh, wait, that would be 1892!” :smack: Fortunately, she was a sweet little old lady and didn’t make me feel TOO stupid.
Let’s see, my paternal grandparents arrived in this country in 1881 and 1884, I believe, as children, so they were born in the 1870s. I only “overlapped” with my grandfather, as he died when I was about five months old and obviously I don’t remember anything about him. I’ve been told that he would sit next to me on the couch, because he was so weak he didn’t trust himself to hold the baby. I have memories of my grandmother’s house and some of the things in it, but not really of her. She died when I was four.
The relative with the earliest birth year that I actually had any real interaction with was my maternal grandmother. She was born in 1893. I was almost eight when she died, and my mother was her only child, so she lived with us for a couple of winters and then we were always in and out of her apartment a block away. She’s the one who was so picky about our grammar and language, to the point of teaching the dog to lie (not lay) down. And things don’t bust, they burst. Mom said it was probably because she was self-conscious about only having an eighth-grade education.
The farthest back non-relative I’ve ever been acquainted with was a man who lived in the retirement/nursing home where I volunteered when I was in high school. He celebrated his 100th birthday that year, so he was born in 1869 or '70. When we asked him what he wanted for his birthday he told us, “ExLax.”
OK, I checked the family geneological records and found that my father’s paternal grandmother whom I remember meeting at several holiday get-togethers was born in 1876.
My wife has me beat, however. She once met her paternal great-grandfather who was born in 1854 and died at the age of 112 & 1/2 in 1967.