On September 24, 1880, Sarah DeRemer Knauss, née Clark, was born in Hollywood, a small coal-mining community in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. She would go on to become the oldest validated person in United States history, living for 119 years and 97 days.
Knauss grew up in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region and later lived much of her adult life in Allentown. In 1901, she married Abraham Lincoln Knauss, a tanner who later became a prominent Republican leader and Lehigh County’s recorder of deeds. The couple had one daughter, Kathryn, and Abraham Knauss died in 1965.
Her life spanned an extraordinary period of American change: she was born in the final months of Rutherford B. Hayes’s presidency and lived through the rise of automobiles, radio, aviation, two world wars, television, spaceflight, and the early digital era. On April 16, 1998, she became the world’s oldest living person.
Sarah Knauss died in Allentown on December 30, 1999, only days before the year 2000, while still holding that title. Her verified lifespan of 119 years and 97 days remains the longest ever documented for an American and ranks among the greatest authenticated human lifespans on record.
Image via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States.
