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She was world's oldest, if only for a few days

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 30, 2007

HARTFORD, Conn. - Emma Faust Tillman, who was born to former slaves and lived to see 21 American presidencies, died at a nursing home just four days after becoming the world's oldest-known living person. She was 114.

Mrs. Tillman, who lived independently until she was 110, died Sunday (Jan. 28, 2007) in the company of several family members, said Karen Chadderton, administrator of Riverside Health and Rehabilitation Center in East Hartford.

"She went peacefully," Chadderton said. "She was a wonderful woman."

Mrs. Tillman's great-nephew, John B. Stewart Jr., has said she never smoked, never drank, didn't need glasses and only reluctantly agreed to wear a hearing aid.

Mrs. Tillman was born Nov. 22, 1892, during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison. She was born on a plantation near Gibsonville, N.C., where her father was born into slavery and where her parents and grandfather were sharecroppers, according to interviews she gave the Glastonbury, Conn., Historical Society for a 1994 newsletter.

Her four-day reign was the shortest on record, said Robert Young of Guinness World Records.

With Mrs. Tillman's death, the world's oldest person is believed to be Yone Minagawa of Fukuoka, Japan, who is 114.

[Last modified January 30, 2007, 01:06:47]