American supercentenarians are citizens or residents of the United States who have attained or surpassed 110 years of age. , the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) had validated the longevity claims of 782 American supercentenarians. As of , it lists the oldest living American-born person as Spanish emigrant Maria Branyas (born in San Francisco, California, on March 4, 1907), aged . The oldest American resident is listed as Edie Ceccarelli (born in Willits, California, on February 5, 1908), aged . The longest-lived person ever from the United States is Sarah Knauss, of Hollywood, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, who died on December 30, 1999, aged 119 years and 97 days.
100 oldest known Americans
Below is a list of the 100 longest lived American supercentenarians according to the GRG and reliable sourcing.
Biographies
Ann Pouder
Ann Pouder (née Ann Marie Alexander; April 8, 1807 – July 10, 1917) was one of the first modern recognized supercentenarians, living to an age of . Born in London, she emigrated with her family to the United States at the age of 12, settling in Baltimore, Maryland, where she lived for the remainder of her life. She married Alexander Pouder, though she became a widow very early and had no children. Her extreme longevity claim was certified by Alexander Graham Bell. She was bedridden, blind and almost deaf in her last few months, but her mind remained sharp.
Mary Bidwell
Mary Electa Bidwell (May 9, 1881 – April 25, 1996) was an American supercentenarian. She died aged 114 years and 352 days and is the oldest person on record 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 schoolhouse 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 (née Hinnant; March 6, 1882 – January 19, 1998) was an American supercentenarian. She was born to a former slave and married a tenant farmer. Barnes died on January 19, 1998, in Johnston County, North Carolina, of gangrene. She was survived by four of her fifteen children.
Her exact year of birth has been disputed. Though the year 1882 is written in her family bible, the 1900 US Census records her birth year as 1881 and her marriage license claims that she was born in 1880. Authenticating to what was put on the family Bible, Barnes lived for 115 years and 319 days.
Adelina Domingues
Adelina Domingues (February 19, 1888 – August 21, 2002) was a Cape Verdean American supercentenarian who was the world's oldest person from the death of 114-year-old British-American woman Grace Clawson on May 28, 2002, to her own death less than three months later. Domingues was born in Cape Verde. Domingues's Italian father was a harbor pilot by profession, and her mother was Portuguese by ethnicity. She married a ship captain in 1907, and moved to the United States that year. Her husband died from cancer in 1950. Domingues was a missionary from the Church of the Nazarene in Cape Verde and other parts of Africa, and also a religious preacher when she lived in Massachusetts, as well as an expert seamstress.
Domingues was a firm believer in the American Dream, was deeply religious, had conservative political views and was a pen pal of former President of the United States Ronald Reagan. She had four children, but only one of them (a son, Frank) reached adulthood. Frank died in 1998 at the age of 71, with Adelina outliving him by four years. Domingues died at a nursing home in the San Diego, California, area on August 21, 2002, at age 114 years and 183 days. She had claimed she was actually one year older, or 115 years old, but her family and Cape Verdean diplomats did some research and discovered her baptismal information, from which they concluded that Domingues was 114 years old when she died.
Charlotte Benkner
Charlotte Benkner (née Enterlein; November 16, 1889 – May 14, 2004) was an American supercentenarian and considered the world's oldest person from 2003 to 2004. Subsequent recognition of other supercentenarians ranked Benkner as the third oldest at the time of her death.