I’ve interviewed a few centenarians over the years and there’s something amazing and unreal about talking to someone who was alive when the Titanic sank or World War I kicked off.
What’s remarkable is how much the world has changed - one that really stuck in my memory was a 100-year-old woman saying she’d never heard an American accent before the advent of talking pictures in the late 1920s.
Being born in 1948, I’ve known a number of WWI veterans, though none of them very well. Owing to various factors, no relatives of mine in the “grandparent-ly” generation with whom I was acquainted, actually fought in that war.
A mildly humorous “aside” to this matter, from my early childhood: our family’s then landlord, “Mr. P.”-- a nice guy, then in his sixties – had served in WWI. I remember my father telling me, “Mr. P. was a soldier in the Fourteen – Eighteen War”. I might well then, not have been aware of WWI – had certainly never before heard it referred to in that particular way. I remember thinking bemusedly, “Sure, Mr. P. is pretty old; but I wouldn’t have thought he was 550 years old”. My confusion took a bit of sorting-out…
Emma Martina Luigia Morano was living in Pallanza when she died yesterday. I’ll be vacationing in Italy this June, and will spend a couple of nights at Lake Como. Pallanza is just a little west, on the north shore of Lake Maggiore. If I can find out where she is buried, and if that’s not too far off our trail, it would be interesting to visit her grave and pay my respects to the last recorded person from the 1800s.
If my parents were still alive, they’d be turning 104 this year. One of my mom’s earliest memories was the parade at the end of WWI.
And my paternal grandfather escaped from Russia when he was drafted by the Czar, to fight in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Jews were the first to be drafted, so at 19 he became a draft dodger.
Our country was built by draft dodgers.
You bet! That’s why one of my great-grandfathers stowed away to come to America. He didn’t fancy being cannon fodder for Bismarck while he unified Germany.
My grandparents, all born around 1885, were all alive when I was born and I knew them all well. A great grandfather and great grandmother were still alive. The former died before I was one, but I vaguely remember her.
When I was in HS the very last civil war vets (who had signed up when they were 14, lying that they were 16) were biting the dust. The last civil war widows survived into this millennium.
Oddly, I never met, AFAIK, any WWI vet, although I knew many (including 3 uncles) from WWII.
Same, and I’m 20 years younger than you. Both my grandfathers were WWI veterans who died before I was born, and I’ve only dim memories of my gran and my nana who both died when I was little. 
My grandmother told me that one of her earliest memories was seeing some of the bodies being landed from the General Slocum disaster of 1904, when she was 4 years old.
She used to speak about Teddy Roosevelt as “my president,” although she was actually born during McKinley’s term.
So, since the 19th century didn’t actually end until 1/1/1901, we still have two known people alive who were born in that century, both in 1900.
Violet Brown and Nabi Tajima.
Still, losing the last person born in the 1800s seems more of a milestone than losing the last 19th century person will be.
I had a lucky and very nice meeting with TR’s daughter Ethel when I was about twelve and she was about 70.
Or sometimes the reverse. My first European ancestor to come to the New World arrived in 1775 and fought in the Revolution. Family legend has it that he came over looking for an opportunity to fight the English.
French or Irish?
+1
Violet Brown and Nabi Tajima are the last two people living verified to have been born in the 19th century.
Three of my immigrant ancestors enlisted in the Union Army in the Civil War as soon as they could.
One, a German, arrived in 1849. I suspect he was a refugee from the political problems caused by the revolutions of 1848. But at the age of 45 he signed up at the very beginning of the war in a unit called the Fifth German rifles. He was captured while on picket duty in the very first engagement with the Confederates, evidently because he was drunk on schnapps with the rest of his company.
An Irish ancestor seems to have been a refugee from the Potato Famine during the 1840s. He also enlisted at the very beginning of the war. Ironically he was later captured and died of starvation in Andersonville Prison Camp.
I hate to be That Guy, but pretty much no-one outside the SDMB or your more pedantic halls of academia considers 1900 to be the 19th century.
Nevertheless, it is.
Nevertheless, it is. You seem to have overlooked where you are posting.
My point is that it’s not, as far as pretty much everyone is concerned. It’s one of those cases where common usage has changed the definition, basically.
My point is that, nevertheless, it is.