Meet Bessie, The Oldest Living Person In Iowa
Bessie Hendricks was born November 7, 1907, and is not only the oldest person living in Iowa, she is also currently the oldest known living person in the United States, according to Gerontology. She is a supercentenarian which is a person who has reached the age of 110. She was born on a farm southeast of Auburn, Iowa.
If you live long enough, it's likely you're going to accrue a lot of relatives. If you think your family is big...Bessie sure has a lot of names to remember. According to Gerontology, Bessie has 9 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren, 42 great-great-grandchildren, and 7 great-great-great-grandchildren. I can hardly remember the names of the cousins I don't see very often, 42 great-great-grandchildren would be almost impossible.
You can actually follow along with Bessie and her journey as well as other Supercentenarios on Facebook. She has her own fan page at Bessie Hendricks Fans. Here is a video from 2017 of Bessie celebrating her 110th birthday. Just think this was 4 years ago! She's still rocking and rolling to this day!
According to this Online Age Calculator, Bessie was born on a Thursday and is 114 years, 9 months, 1 week, and 2 days old. She's been alive for 1377 months, 5,988 weeks, 41,921 days, 1,006,104 hours, and 60,366,240 minutes.
According to History, the life expectancy back in 1907 was 45 years for men and 49 for women. In 1907 the Chicago Cubs won the world series and the world series was only 4 years old. The cubs beat the Detroit Tigers 4 games to 0.
If you wanted to see a movie in 1907 you could go for the price of a nickel. According to History, movie theaters would hold about 200 people, there was live piano music before each show, and most "movies" were sketches that lasted around 15 minutes.
1907 was also the year Americans saw their first ever Electric Washing Machine. The Thor washing machine was created by a Company from Chicago called Hurley Machine Company.
How often do you have packages delivered to your house? Well, you can thank the year 1907 for that too. According to History, a man from Seattle named James E Casey borrowed $100 to start a delivery service called American Messenger Company.
He would run deliveries of food or errands for people and most were done on foot. If the trip was longer, he would use a bicycle. By 1919, the company had grown and expanded beyond Seattle. That company is now known as United Parcel Service or...UPS.
Bessie's story is pretty miraculous and when I stumbled onto this random list of the world's oldest people, I immediately had to find out who this incredible Iowan is. After the death of Thelma Sutcliffe, on January 17th, 2022, Bessie became the oldest living person in the United States.