By Athena, do you make me feel old. Stop that.
I just looked it up and it seems that my great grandma was born in 1900. She’d be the oldest person I’ve met - and remembered.
She died in 1985 when I was 6. Sadly her daughter, my grandma, died a year later.
Nava - If your great-grandmother was 96 in 1985, she must’ve been born in 1891, not 1881. Or she was 104.
StG
There are several landmarks in aging, such as when you’re in your late 20s/early 30s and for no good reason it occurs one day that “Every dog that was alive on the day I was born is now dead”.
Another is when you realize, as I did a few years ago, "Several of the people I knew really, really well when I was a kid (such as my twin aunts born in 1889 and my grandfather who was born in 1893) would, if they were still alive, be the oldest people on Earth. My grandmothers would be 113 and 110 respectively, which would put them on the short list.
These weren’t people that I once hugged at a Christmas get together but people I couldn’t estimate to the nearest hundred how many meals and get-togethers I shared with. They could all remember the first time they rode a car, saw an airplane, went to a movie, etc.- they were all in their 30s when talkies came out and my age when the Depression was going on.
Then when you think that when they were young- not little kids, but young adults- every community still had hundreds of people who could remember firsthand fighting in/running a household during/being a slave before and during the Civil War. It’s one of those things that’s hard to impart for people who think of 19th century history being so distant- it’s just one or two degrees of separation away from most of us.
I can’t compete with most people in this thread. My best is my great-grandfather, who was born July 4, 1904. I’ve racked my brain and can’t break into the 19th century.
My Nana died last year at age 98.
My grandfather was born in 1889. I have a single memory of him lying in his bed. He passed away when i was still a toddler. I’m the youngest of his grandchildren. I’m 30.
I vaguely remember my great-grandmother, who would have been born in the 1870’s, I suppose. But, she died when I was 6 or 7, 40 years ago.
My paternal grandmother was born in 1896 and I have very definite memories of her-she died when I was in college.
My wife’s grandmother was born in 1907 and she’s still with us and, for someone who is 104, is still very much with it. (I mean, she is somewhat forgetful, but dang, she’s 104! She still knows who I am, and that’s saying something I think…)
I think the oldest person I’ve met was a World War I veteran I interviewed in 1986. I’d have to dig up the story to see if he told me his birth date (and if I included it), but I would think he would have been born in the 1890s. He taught school before going to the war, which was a charming story of a rural Kentucky schoolhouse in a tiny county along the Ohio River. So I’d guess he would have been at least 20 when he went to fight. He stayed afterward in Germany, he told me, and learned German and studied their factories and technology. He even recited a poem for me, in German. Poor dear fellow was so deaf. I had to shout my questions into his ear.
I knew two of my great-grandparents (maternal father’s parents) who lived into their 90s. Etta was born probably around 1870, and came west from Minnesota as a girl, reportedly in a covered wagon; Charles was probably a year or two older.
Roddy
I have a very faint memory of my great-grandmother, who died in 1962, when I was five years old. She was born in 1861, and remembered her father telling her mother that Lincoln had been shot. And her mother saying, “Good”.
ETA: Reviewing the thread, it looks like I win by two or three years. Can anyone beat 1861?
I think I met my great-grandmother, who died age 99 at some point in the early '80s, but I would only have been a baby.
For people I remember, it would probably be her daughter, my great-aunt, who moved out of her house when she died, and into ours. She died in about 1996, and told me how she’d once been allowed to join the overnight air-raid watch her town had for the first world war, as a girl. I’m not sure exactly how old she was off the top of my head, but it’s the only first hand story I’ve heard from that era.
My great-grandfather on my dad’s side, who was born in 1899.
This. Are you me?
-D/a
Maternal Grandmother, born March 1885. She died when I was 9 years old in 1970.
I probably met older people, but nothing that I can pinpoint down their age. Like my aunt’s (by marriage) mother and she was always at Thanksgiving and Xmas dinners when I was young.
There was a really good chance that Mrs Litchfield was older than my grandmother as my Aunt was much older than my mother.
There’s a picture of my great-grandmother (b. 1878) holding me when I was an infant.
I’m 67. My grandfather was born in Sonoma County in 1858 and was California’s oldest native son when he died at age 91 in 1950. I would have been almost 6 and I do remember him and especially the long 60 mile trip to visit almost every weekend of his last year. A long obituary from the local paper pops up in Google under “Descendants of Daniel Boone”. People are posting about grandparents and great grandparents being born around the turn of the 20th century. My dad was born in 1898 and my mom was born in 1904. I think I win so far. (I can’t possibly be this old!)
While they didn’t meet them, I’ll mention that there are a couple of Dopers who are the grandchildren of Confederate veterans, both due to men becoming fathers older than normal.
I don’t remember this obviously, but my great grandfather was born August 10, 1885 and died in May, 1972, two months after I was born. I have seen a picture of newly born me with my mother, her father, and his father (the aforementioned oldster), it was somewhat apparent that great-grandpa wasn’t long for this world, and as how I was Grandpa’s first grandchild, they wanted a 4 generations picture before it was too late.
As to people I actually remember, I do remember when I was growing up the man next door lived to be nearly 100 (like just a few months shy), had a much younger wife too (in her early 80s) and he easily kept up with her (we once caught him on the roof doing housework, he asked us not to tell his wife because she’d worry). Can’t recall when he would have passed on, my guess is sometime in the early to mid 1990s.
Only 1917 (my friend’s mother - he is 53) - she smokes like a chimney and is still kicking on. I like to use her as the reason why smoking doesn’t kill you. 
In theory, it’s quite possible I met someone born in the 19th century as a very young child as many would still have been alive in the 80s, but who knows.
On a related note, Maudie Hopkins, believed to be the last surviving widow of a Civil War veteran, only died in 2008. :eek: They married when she was 19 and he was 86. There have apparently been a few other very young ladies who married very old Civil War vets and were still living themselves until quite recently. Most of them seem to done it for the pension benefits.