List of supercentenarians from the United States

Living American supercentenarians

Below is a list of supercentenarians living in the United States.

100 longest lived Americans

Below is a list of the longest lived American supercentenarians according to the GRG. Entries for living people are rendered in italics.

†^ denotes age at death, or, if living, age as of 11 January 2016

American emigrant supercentenarians over 113-years-old

Below is a list of supercentenarians at least 113 years old who were born in the United States and who are living in or died in another country. Entries for living people are rendered in italics.

Oldest American by state

This is a list of the oldest people (women and men) by birth from each U.S. state. States farther west have fewer verified recordholders. Entries for living people are rendered in italics.

The list is based on modern state borders. Some of the supercentenarians were born before the state's admission to the Union.

Ann Pouder

Ann Pouder nee Ann Alexander Poudar (London, United Kingdom April 8, 1807 – Baltimore, Maryland, United States July 10, 1917) was one of the first modernly recognized supercentenarians. Her age at death was 7009347937120000000♠110 years, 93 days.

When Pouder was twelve years old, her family immigrated to the United States. There she lived the following 98 years of her life in Baltimore, Maryland. She married, although became a widow very early and had no children. Her extreme longevity claim was certified by Alexander Graham Bell. In her last few months, she was bedridden, blind, and almost deaf, but her mind remained sharp.

Florence Knapp

Florence Knapp (October 10, 1873 – January 11, 1988) was, for the last two weeks of her life, recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest person in the world.

Born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, she lived in nearby Montgomery Square much of her life and came from a large and long-lived family, eight of her siblings dying in their 80s and 90s and one sister reaching age 108.

By October 1987, when she was honored by the Pennsylvania legislature, she was recognized by Guinness as the oldest person in the United States, and the death of Anna Eliza Williams on December 27, 1987, meant that Knapp became the oldest verified recognized living person. Her death, aged 114 years 93 days, just 15 days after meant that she never appeared in a Guinness Book as the oldest living person.

Her death caused some confusion as to who her successor was, with Guinness recognition and press publicity alighting first on Orpha Nusbaum (August 1875 – March 1988), who died before the 1989 edition's deadline, then Birdie May Vogt (August 1876 – July 1989), who appeared in the 1989 edition's main text, then Jeanne Calment, mentioned in the addenda section, and finally in November 1988 on Carrie C. White, whose claim to birth in November 1874 was accepted. However, with recent census research calling White's authentication into question, Calment may very well have been Florence Knapp's actual immediate successor.

Ettie Mae Greene

Ettie Mae Greene nee Thomas (September 8, 1877 – February 26, 1992) was an American supercentenarian who was recognized by Guinness World Records as the 'oldest living American' in 1991 (later, the SSA study would replace her with Lucy Hannah, who was apparently older). She was born in Wayside, West Virginia, and worked as a seamstress and a farmer. Greene died of a cold at the Springfield Comprehensive Care Center in Springfield, West Virginia. At the time of her death at the age of 114 years 171 days, she had nine children (four of whom she had outlived), 21 grandchildren, 47 great-grandchildren and 37 great-great-grandchildren. She still holds the record for being the oldest person in the state of West Virginia.

Wilhelmina Kott

Wilhelmina Kott nee Geringer (March 7, 1880 – September 6, 1994) was an American supercentenarian recognized by Guinness World Records as the 'oldest living American' in its 1995 edition, following the death of Margaret Skeete. She was born in Peru, Illinois, as one of 16 children to George and Sophia Geringer. She moved to Chicago in 1881, where she lived almost her entire life. She married Charles Kott in 1899. She died on September 6, 1994, aged 114 years 183 days.

Mary Bidwell

Mary Electa Bidwell nee Nobel (May 19, 1881– April 25, 1996) was an American supercentenarian. She died at age 114 years 342 days on April 25, 1996. She is the oldest person ever to die in Connecticut.

Her parents were Charles Woodruff Bidwell and Alice Beach Nobel. She was a descendant of John Bidwell, one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut. Bidwell worked as a teacher in a one-room school house for six years. She married Charles Hubbell Bidwell, a distant cousin, in 1906.

Bidwell lived on her own in North Haven, Connecticut, until she was 110. Bidwell died at the Arden House, a nursing home in Hamden, Connecticut.

Maggie Barnes

Maggie Pauline Barnes nee Hinnant (March 6, 1882 – January 19, 1998) was an American supercentenarian. She was a resident of Johnston County, North Carolina. Barnes died from complications following a minor foot infection. Barnes, who was born to a slave and married a tenant farmer, was survived by four children; 11 of her children preceded her in death.

Some dispute exists as to her date of birth. Though the 1882 date is written in the family's bible, the 1900 US Census lists her as having been born in 1881, and her marriage license says she was born in 1880. Authenticating to the latest of those dates, Barnes was 115 years, 319 days old when she died.

Barnes is the oldest person ever in U.S. state of North Carolina on record.

Clara Huhn

Clara Huhn nee Herling (January 28, 1887 – December 20, 2000) was an American homemaker and supercentenarian. Born in a home near Clarkson, Nebraska, she lived near Schuyler for most of her life. She remained active, healthy and independent until the last few months of her life, and even answered an interview just before her 113th birthday. At age 113 years, 327 days, she is the oldest person on record born in Nebraska, but she was not the oldest person on record to die in that particular state, since she died in La Mesa, California. The title of the oldest person on record to die in Nebraska belongs to Helen Stetter, who died on June 1, 2007, at age 113 years, 195 days.

Delvina Dahlheimer

Mary Delvina Dahlheimer nee Morissette (December 31, 1888 – March 13, 2002) was an American supercentenarian. Delvina lived alone until entering Guardian Angels Care Center at age 101, where she lived out the rest of her days. Dahlheimer's Minnesota state record title, 113 years 72 days, was surpassed by Catherine Hagel on February 9, 2008. Incidentally, Hagel was the sister-in-law of Dahlheimer.

Mae Harrington

Mae Harrington nee Maxwell (January 20, 1889 – December 29, 2002) was an American supercentenarian who became the world's oldest living person upon the death of Adelina Domingues. Harrington was also the oldest living American and the oldest person ever from the state of New York, breaking the record held since the 1920s by then world's oldest person Delina Filkins, also 113, but her own record was subsequently broken on May 28, 2005 by Grace Thaxton, who was born in the state before moving to and dying in Kentucky. Because her age was not authenticated during her lifetime, the public recognition she was due went to another 113-year-old, Mary Parr (January 29, 1889 – October 29, 2002), who was born nine days after her, dying two months before her, as her age was only validated posthumously.

After Harrington's death aged 113 years 343 days, Mary Christian became the oldest living person in the United States, and Yukichi Chuganji became the oldest living person.

Mary Christian

Mary Dorothy Christian (nee Perry, June 12, 1889 – April 20, 2003) was an American supercentenarian who became the oldest recognized person in the United States at age 113 upon the death of 113-year-old Mae Harrington and was succeeded in this title by another 113-year-old, Elena Slough. Perry was born in Taunton, Massachusetts to parents whose name had been anglicized from Perreira (she was of Portuguese descent). She spent much of her life in California, where she died in a San Pablo, California nursing home at 113 years and 312 days.

Elena Slough

Elena Proctor Slough nee Rodenbaugh (July 4, 1889 – October 5, 2003) was the oldest recognized person in the United States from the death of Mary Christian on April 20, 2003, until Slough's own death, aged 114 years 93 days, six months later. After her death, the oldest recognized person in the United States was Charlotte Benkner.

Some sources date her birth to 1888, but the oldest records state that she was born in 1889.

Charlotte Benkner

Charlotte Benkner (nee Enterlein; November 16, 1889 – May 14, 2004) was an American supercentenarian and the oldest verified living person from November 2003 until sufficient documentation was found to validate the age of Ramona Trinidad Iglesias-Jordan of Puerto Rico in March 2004. The subsequent recognition of Maria Capovilla of Ecuador in December 2005 moved Benkner down to third place at the time of her death, but she is still the oldest verified German-born person.

Benkner was born in Leipzig, Germany, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1896. She grew up in Peekskill, New York, where her family ran the Albert Hotel, and as a young woman once met then President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt. On her 1908 marriage to Karl Benkner, she moved west, living in Pennsylvania and Ohio before retiring to Arizona. Already a supercentenarian and the oldest person in Arizona, Benkner returned to Ohio to live in North Lima. She became the oldest recognized person in the United States when 114-year-old Elena Slough died in October 2003. She lived with her sister Tillie O'Hare (the youngest of the siblings), whom she once cared for when their parents were running the hotel, until Tillie (born February 15, 1904) died, just three weeks shy of becoming a centenarian, on January 25, 2004. Benkner survived her sister by only four months, dying at age 114 years 180 days after she was briefly hospitalized in Youngstown, Ohio, and was buried in Peekskill.

Consuelo Moreno-Lopez

Consuelo Moreno-Lopez (February 5, 1893 – November 13, 2004) was born in Northern Morocco. She later emigrated to the United States in 1960. She died stateside, aged 111 years and 282 days, as the result of an adverse reaction to a flu shot. Moreno-Lopez holds the longevity record for Morocco, which declared its independence in 1955.

Emma Verona Johnston

Emma Verona Johnston (nee Calhoun) (August 6, 1890 – December 1, 2004) was an American supercentenarian recognized as the "oldest living American" from May 2004 until her death at age 114 years 117 days. Johnston was born in Indianola, Iowa to a large family. She was the oldest living graduate of Drake University, where she was a member of the Class of 1912.

At age 98, she moved from Iowa to Ohio in order to live with her daughter and son-in-law. She continued to be in good health even when she attained supercentenarian status, being able to walk up steps and alert and able to engage in conversations.

Charlotte Benkner's death on May 14, 2004 left Johnston as the oldest documented person in the United States, and the death of Puerto Rican Ramona Trinidad Iglesias-Jordan on May 29, 2004 left her third-oldest recognized person in the world behind Ecuadorian Maria Capovilla and Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper of the Netherlands. She died in Worthington, Ohio on December 1, 2004.

Grace Thaxton

Grace Thaxton nee Menges (June 18, 1891 – July 6, 2005) was a supercentenarian, the oldest person in Kentucky, the fourth-oldest person in the U.S. and the seventh-oldest documented person in the world at the time of her death. She also became New York state's all-time recordholder on May 28, 2005, aged 113 years 344 days, breaking the record set by Mae Harrington in December 2002. Thaxton died several weeks later on July 6, 2005, aged 114 years 18 days.

Thaxton almost lived to see her son Robert (1915–2011) turn 90 on July 12, 2005. Thaxton's mother (1860–1969) lived to 109.

Bettie Wilson

Bettie Antry Wilson nee Rutherford (September 13, 1890 – February 13, 2006) was thought to be the oldest verified living person in the United States upon the death of 114-year-old Emma Verona Johnston on December 1, 2004. Until the subsequent verification of Elizabeth Bolden. Both were born in the rural South—where they lived less than 100 miles apart.

Born of freed slaves, Solomon and Delia Rutherford, she is the oldest resident of the state of Mississippi ever recorded (the previous record was 113 years, 12 days set in 1994). In late April 2005, Wilson moved into a new home funded by donations.

Wilson celebrated her 115th birthday in September 2005, at which time she ranked as the third-oldest living person in the world.

Wilson died at her New Albany home on February 13, 2006, aged 115 years, 153 days. She was survived by her son, five grandchildren, 46 great-grandchildren, 95 great-great-grandchildren and 38 great-great-great grandchildren.

Thomas Nelson, Sr.

Thomas D. Nelson, Sr. (July 8, 1895 – January 9, 2007) was, at age 111, the oldest living man in the United States and the second-oldest man in the world from December 7, 2006 (the death of Moses Hardy), for one month until his own death, aged 111 years 185 days.

He had been living in Port Arthur, Texas, since the early 1930s. He opened a candy shop in the mid-1930s, and worked there for more than 60 years.

Walter H. Seward

Walter Hamilton Seward (October 13, 1896 – September 14, 2008) was ranked as the third-oldest verified man living in the United States, the sixth-oldest man in the world and the verified oldest recognized living person in New Jersey at the time of his death, aged 111 years 337 days.

Seward was raised in Toledo, Ohio, and moved to Vineland, New Jersey, while he was in high school. He was a 1917 graduate of Rutgers University and a 1924 graduate of Harvard Law School. He practiced law through his 90s. Seward died on September 14, 2008 at age 111 years and 11 months from a blood infection that weakened his heart.

George Francis

George Rene Francis (June 6, 1896 – December 27, 2008) was an American supercentenarian and the joint second-oldest living man in the world, together with Englishman Henry Allingham, until Francis's death aged 112 years, 204 days. He was also the oldest living man in the United States, following the death of Antonio Pierro on February 8, 2007. Francis was from New Orleans, Louisiana, but since 1949 lived in Sacramento, California, where a local newspaper published a poem that Francis enjoyed reciting to friends and the public throughout his life. He credited his longevity to nature, and enjoyed a rich diet of pork, eggs, milk and lard. He gave up smoking cigars at the age of 75.

Francis attempted to join the army in World War I but was rejected for service in 1918 as being too short and small (he weighed only about 100 pounds (45.35 kg)). Despite this, he later was a boxer before becoming a barber and then a chauffeur. Francis claimed to have met Louis Armstrong and Booker T. Washington and to have seen Babe Ruth hit a home run. His wife died in 1964.

Olivia Patricia Thomas

Olivia Patricia Thomas nee Trevellyan (June 29, 1895 – November 16, 2009) was, at age 114 years 140 days, the world's third oldest verified living person, following the death of Gertrude Baines on September 11, 2009. Thomas was the second oldest American (and the oldest born in the United States, as Mary Josephine Ray was born in Canada). She moved to Buffalo, New York, in 1946 and went on to become the oldest living person in the state of New York.

On October 25, 2009, Thomas became the oldest person born in Iowa, surpassing the age of Emma Verona Johnston (114 years, 117 days). On December 22, 2009, Neva Morris surpassed Thomas as the oldest verified Iowan ever.

Shelby Harris

Shelby Harris (March 31, 1901 – July 25, 2012), an African American, was the third-oldest man in the world, oldest verified man in the United States and Illinois's oldest living person at the time of his death.

A native of Ayrshire, Indiana, Harris worked in coal mines and a foundry. At 41 he joined the Army for World War II, but a broken ankle ended his training. A deacon of his church until he was 102, Harris entered a Rock Island nursing home at 105. At his death he was a great-great-great-grandfather, his youngest grandson 57 years old. Harris died on July 25, 2012, aged 111 years and 116 days.

Mamie Rearden

Mamie Julia Rearden (nee Lewis; September 7, 1898 – January 2, 2013) was an African American supercentenarian who, upon her death at the age of 114 years and 117 days, was the world's 5th oldest living person, the 2nd oldest living American, and the 2nd oldest living person of African descent behind Gertrude Weaver. Rearden holds the record as the oldest person ever from the state of South Carolina.

Mamie Julia Lewis grew up in the Pleasant Lane section of Edgefield County, South Carolina. She attended Log Creek Community School and Bettis Academy Junior College, and began her career as a teacher in 1918. In 1919, Rearden married Ocay Rearden, and the couple had eleven children. She was widowed in 1979. When asked how it feels being one of the world's oldest living persons, Rearden replied: "I don't know how it makes me feel. I really don't know."

Emma Didlake

Emma Didlake (March 13, 1905 – August 16, 2015), was the oldest living American World War II veteran until her death on August 16, 2015. For her service in World War II, Didlake earned the Women's Army Corps Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal. Shortly before her death, aged 110 years, 156 days, she met with President Barack Obama at the White House.

Frank Levingston

Frank Levingston (born November 13, 1905) is, at the age of 7009347643360000000♠110 years, 59 days, the oldest verified surviving American World War II veteran. He lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana.