https://longeviquest.com/2025/05/supercentenarian-siblings/

Exceptional longevity stems from several factors, including environment, lifestyle and your genetic makeup. This means that there (on a larger level) is an advantage in having parents or siblings with long lives as you, most likely, share a common background/upbringing with them as well as similar genes. My recent paper on siblings and parents of Swedish 108-year-olds explored their longevity, compared to the rest of the Swedish population and found that there is an advantage in longevity for both siblings and parents. Of course, just because you or your sibling lives a long life does not guarantee that each and every sibling will as there are several other variables that play a role – Say that you get cancer or that you have different levels of social support, which can affect your quality of life and life expectancy.

There are several examples of parents and siblings (and other combinations) that have both lived to become supercentenarians, which I will list below as it could be fun “trivia” and also highligths the advantage in chance of living to 110 as the likelihood for any given random person to reach that age is extremely low. I will also make note of a few other “family records” in longevity.

Supercentenarian Siblings

There have, to date, been six pairs of two siblings becoming supercentenarians. The first were American siblings Nelle Eby (1881-1993) and Katharine Davenport (1883-1993), but the first (and so far only) time there have been two living supercentenarians who were siblings was during three months of the lives of the Guadeloupe sibling-pair of Iréna Martial (1909-2022) and Léone Béziat (1911-2021). The oldest combined age for a pair of supercentenarian siblings was Japanese sisters Kame Ganeko (1905-2019) and Kikue Taira (1910-2024) who had a combined lifespan of 228 years, 199 days. That is almost five years longer than for any other pair of siblings ever. The remaining three pairs of supercentenarian siblings were:

• Lillian Priest (1908-2021) and Gwen Moore (1911-2023)
• Mildred Layfield (1908-2020) and Maxine Hix (1913-2024)
• Giovanna Addari (1910-2020) and Amelia Addari (1912-2024)

  To note is therefore that there have not been any known sister-brother or brother-brother supercentenarians yet. The closest brother-sister pair was Bethuel Frazier (1902-2011, 109 years, 20 days) and Nina Willis (1909-2023, 114 years, 123 days) and the closest brother-brother pair was David Wiener (1902-2011, 109 years, 324 days) and Robert Wiener (1908-2019, 110 years, 113 days).

  Parent-Child Supercentenarians

  There have been two, or potentially three parent-child supercentenarian pairs, all of them mother-daughter. The first one, which is a bit questionable and therefore not LongeviQuest-recognized, was the American pair of Charlotte Lollis (1864?/65-1974) and Mollie Lollis (1889-2001). The reason as to why we currently do not consider this validated is that the 1870 census for Charlotte Lollis gives her age as ‘5’ rather than ‘6’. Pretty much every single other document for Charlotte Lollis supports a birth in 1864, including two other early-life records, so it is possible that she will be validated as a supercentenarian eventually.

  For the two validated pairs, one is another American pair, Mary Cota (1870-1982) and Rosabell Fenstermaker (1893-2005). The other was yet another French overseas territory pair, Félicité Jandia (1881-1992) and Julie Montabord (1906-2019) of Guadaloupe and Martinique. Maybe there is a supercentenarian hotspot there?

  Other supercentenarian relationships

  Aunt-Niece

  • Lucy Reynolds (1872-1983) and Vonnie Looney (1893-2003)

  Cousins

  • Cleo Hinckley (1890-2002) and Florence Canonic (1902-2012)

  In-Laws

  • Delvina Dahlheimer (1888-2002) and Catherine Hagel (1894-2008)

  There have been no known wife-husband supercentenarians, yet.

  Moving on. As I said previously, it is common for a supercentenarian to have had centenarian siblings. But what about instances where there were several centenarian siblings? What is the record? Three? No. Four? No! Five? No! Six? Yes! There have been two known instances of six siblings reaching the age of 100, one Irish family and one in France. In both these instances none of the siblings became supercentenarians:

  • Clarke family: Joseph (101), Charles (100), Patrick (101), James (102), Margaret (100), and Sheila (101)
  • Lavergne family: Lucienne (102), Édouard (101), René (100), Raymond (101), André (102), and Roland (100)

  There are, of course, several other family-related records that are achieved by living exceptionally long. For instance, the oldest twins were Umeno Sumiyama (1913-2023, 109) and Koume Kodama (1913-2022, 108).

  To conclude

  These anecdotal observations from within the supercentenarian world definitely give credence to research on exceptional longevity and its findings that relatives of the exceptionally old live longer. So one way to increase your chances to live a very long life would be to have a (super)centenarian sibling. Of course, that is hardly something you can know until late in life. But if exceptional longevity is a combination of factors, perhaps asking your long-lived relatives for their “secrets” is one way to go?