Ematesse Joseph, of Everett, Massachusetts, sadly passed away on September 19, 2023 at the claimed age of 113.
She claimed to have been born on February 18, 1910, somewhere in Haiti (I have yet to locate any articles giving her exact birthplace).
Was she even known about before?
Was she even known about before?
Yes, multiple birthdays in the past had been reported. She became a naturalized citizen at the claimed age of 108.
I don't know whether she was the age claimed (it's entirely possible), but we just don't have enough info about her early life to investigate, hence why I used the question mark.
Her wiki page obviously has not been updated
“Second-oldest person in Massachusetts behind Hazel Plummer”
Looking at her son's obituary and cross-referencing it with Haitian civil registration, I think there's a decent chance she was the age claimed. Her children seem to have been born from 1939 to 1945. The problem is that we don't have her place of birth, or the names of her parents, in order to locate her own birth record. Frustrating...