Woman cited as the world’s oldest person dies at 114

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Eunice G. Sanborn, an East Texas woman cited as the world’s oldest person, has died at 114.

Sanborn died Monday morning at her home in Jacksonville, Tex., said Patricia Ellis of the Boren-Conner Funeral Home.

Sanborn had been recognized as the world’s oldest person since Nov. 4, when a 114-year-old nun named Eugenie Blanchard died on the French Caribbean island of St. Barts, according to the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group.

Sanborn was listed as the world’s oldest person, citing data from the 1900 census. Robert Young of the gerontology group said the title passes to 114-year-old Besse Cooper of Monroe, Ga.

The gerontology group said Sanborn was born July 20, 1896, in Lake Charles, La., and moved to Texas in 1937. She has told the Tyler Morning Telegraph newspaper in November that she outlived three husbands and a daughter, who died in 1996.

Four people took turns caring for Sanborn as she lived out her years in the two-story Victorian house she bought in the 1940s after the death of her second husband.

Her daughter and her third husband shared the house with her until their deaths. Her third husband died in the 1970s, according to the Morning Telegraph.

‘I don’t know how long I’ll be here, but I’ve enjoyed it,’ she told the newspaper in 2007. ‘Life is a wonderful thing if you make it that way. ‘

--Associated Press