Susannah Mushatt Jones, the world's oldest person, died on Thursday at age 116 at her senior home in Brooklyn.
The Gerontology Research Group
told the New York Daily News that the Alabama native was crowned the world's oldest person by Guinness Book of Records when Jerlean Telly died last year at 116.
At the time, Jones told the newspaper that she believed her long life was attributed to avoiding both smoking and drinking, getting sleep, and eating bacon. She died at 116 years and 311 days.
Jones was born in Lowdes County, Alabama, on July 6, 1899,
wrote AL.com.
Jones' grandparents lived as slaves in the United States and her parents were sharecroppers.
"Her belief would be to live an unselfish life, to support others, to be thoughtful and kind," Jones' niece, Lois Judge, said in 2015. Although Jones talked about returning to Alabama someday, niece Lavilla Mushatt Watson said back then that she was not healthy enough.
"It wouldn't be a good idea now," Watson told AL.com in 2015. "She's too old, too fragile. She's not sick, but too fragile with the circulatory problem in her legs. It wouldn't be impossible but I think it would be too much for her."
New York magazine wrote that Jones moved into a seniors' home decades ago, at age 80.
"At 100, she had to stop cooking for herself and give up her neighborhood-watch role, as her eyesight started to go," wrote the magazine. "Really, it's just cataracts, but she is too stubborn to sit for the surgery. Late in life, she lost her aversion to curse words, though she'd subsequently deny any cussing she did."
With Jones's death, the title of world's oldest person falls to Emma Morano-Martinuzzi, an Italian born on Nov. 29, 1899.
Many people recognized Jones on social media following the news of her death.
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