Besse Cooper

Besse Cooper - 116 years, 100 days, United States
A validation report for Besse Cooper was published in 2020 by Young and Kroczek [39]. Young had first met her at age 111 when she was found to be in great shape. He gathered her first hand testimony including a memory of sailing down the Tennessee River in 1899. This was supplemented with further information from her family during the remainder of her lifetime. Her four children were still living at the time of her death. We were also able to verify many of the most relevant records online ourselves before the validation report emerged.

Besse Brown is first recorded in the 1900 census in Tennessee where her birth month is given as August 1896. She appears again in 1910 age 13, 1920 age 23 (with parents in Tennessee), 1930 age 33 (with husband Luther H. Cooper and one year old daughter Helen) and 1940 (age 43 with daughter Angie 11 years old and two sons). She has two younger sisters age 2 and 5 in the 1910 census and one younger sister age 15 in the 1920 census where she is counted as a teacher. She graduated East Tennessee Normal School (now East Tennessee State University) in 1916. In 1940 census both her sisters were alive and lived with her brother in Tennessee. The validation report tells us that the sisters Mary and Urcel lived to ages 91 and 74 respectively. Her four children would have been aware of any late identity switch making a late sibling swap unlikely.

In 2009, 92 years after her graduation, she returned to her alma mater for a celebration in her honour. She brought with her a class ring. A matriculation card was also found. There are pictures of her available. She was socially active and family testimonies make identity switch scenarios unlikely. In October 2013, Cooper's grandson Paul Cooper founded the Besse Brown Cooper Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to "providing financial, legal, medical and public relations support" for supercentenarians worldwide. Unfortunately, it seems that this foundation no longer exists online.

The high level of consistency in her age reporting on the census returns set her apart from other US cases where validation by proxy has been necessary. The lack of birth registration means that a small early-age exaggeration or a switch with an unrecorded sibling cannot be ruled out entirely but the balance of probabilities is against it. We believe that her validation provides an acceptable standard of checking.