Sarah Knauss

Sarah Knauss

Sarah DeRemer Knauss (née Clark; September 24, 1880 – December 30, 1999) was an American supercentenarian. She was considered the world's oldest living person by Guinness World Records from April 16, 1998, the date of the death of 117-year-old Canadian Marie-Louise Meilleur, until her own death. At age 117, she also set the record for the world's oldest "new" title-holder (which corresponds to the highest "valley" on a graph of the oldest living persons over time). Knauss is the second-oldest fully documented person ever, behind Jeanne Calment, and the oldest person ever of the western hemisphere. She was the last verified living person to have been born before 1885, and remains the most recent person to reach age 117.