Gertrude Weaver

Gertrude Weaver - 116 years, 276 days, United States
Born Gertrude Gaines, she gave birth to her first son in 1916 before she turned 18. Her parent family appears in both the 1910 and 1900 census returns. She was recorded as Girtrude age 10 in 1910 but in the 1900 returns the youngest child in the family is Tonpon aged 2 years. On both occasions it was recorded that the mother had already had 7 children and that one had died. If this is accepted as fact it implies that Tonpon was Gertrude by a different name, and her age is confirmed. Changes of name for infants are a normal occurrence, but why should we believe the count of children rather than their stated names and ages?

If she was born in 1900 after the census then she had her first child at age 16. This would be a motive to exaggerate her age. There is no confirmation of her date of birth and indeed her birth date of 4th July is often a sign that the real date had been forgotten and replaced with the date of American Independence Day. The census returns for 1920 to 1940 were inconsistent and put her birth year at 1900 to 1904.

A validation report was provided in 2020 by Young and Kroczek [39]. In our opinion they do not add enough arguments to confirm robustly that Tonpon was indeed Gertrude. The birth date is also not well established even if this is assumed to be correct. The conclusion therefore remains both weak and fuzzy.