Article brought to you by: Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
Move over ancestry.com. One Virginia home finds six generations of daughters living under the same roof
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
May 14th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
May 14th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
Mother's Day has special meaning to one Virginia family. They can boast
of a 111-year-old great-great-great-grandmother and a new 16-year-old
mom. From the family's matriarch Mollie Wood, who celebrated her 111th
birthday last month, to 7-week-old Braylin Higgins, the child of Wood's
great-great-granddaughter, the family has an amazing six generations of
daughters.
This family trait has been passed down to Savannah Shifflett, the 16-year-old mother of baby Braylin.
"My daughter has not asked for help," Marlo Shifflett, Savannah's mother and Wood's great-granddaughter, said. "And I thought, 'Where does she get that from?' And I realized we're all that way."
While the family said they were devastated when they found out that Savannah was going to have a child, the women say the baby has made them even closer.
"She definitely wasn't planned, but she's my world," Savannah, who is engaged to Braylin's father, said.
All six generations were at the family home last month to celebrate Wood's 111th birthday.
Debaun, who has lived next to Wood's 88-year-old daughter Louise Minter for more than a decade, said the super-centenarian, who is the oldest resident of Charlottesville, Virginia is a "wonderful woman" who is still "sharp eyed" and "keenly aware of the people around her.
"There has not been a mother-daughter picture taken of the two of them in I think 20, 30 years. So the ultimate purpose was to go over and photograph the two of them together," he said.
"May we all be so lucky someday," he wrote in his Facebook album featuring Wood and her family.
A super centenarian is someone who has reached the age of 110 years. This age is achieved by about one in a thousand centenarians.
There are estimated to be 300 - 450 living super centenarians in the world, though only some individual verified living super centenarians are known. A study conducted in 2010 showed that the countries with most super centenarians were United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy.
The first verified super centenarians in human history died in the late 19th century. Until the 1980s, the maximal age to be attained by super centenarians was 114, but this has now been surpassed. To date, there are seven undisputed cases of people who have lived to 116 years of age or older. The oldest verified person ever is Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years 164 days.
© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.