Biography
Knauss lived her entire life in Pennsylvania. She was born to Walter and Amelia Clark in the small short-lived coal-mining town of Hollywood and died in Allentown. In 1901, she married Abraham Lincoln Knauss (December 19, 1878 – March 1, 1965). She was a skilled seamstress, and made her own wedding dress, in addition to making tablecloths and her own clothes. She reportedly learned to sew when she was 4 years old. Sarah, who was 28 when Henry Ford introduced the Ford Model T in 1908, lived through seven U.S. wars and 23 U.S. Presidents. She was 31 at the time of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, and was 46 when Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic.
Knauss was an insurance office manager; upon her marriage, she became a homemaker. Her only child, Kathryn Knauss Sullivan (November 17, 1903 – January 21, 2005), who was 96 at the time of Sarah's death and lived to be 101 herself, once explained Knauss' three-digit age by saying: "She's a very tranquil person and nothing fazes her. That's why she's living this long."
In 1995 aged 115, when asked if she enjoyed her long life, Sarah answered matter-of-factly: "I enjoy it because I have my health and I can do things." Her passions were said to be watching golf on television; doing needlepoint; and nibbling on milk chocolate turtles, cashews, and potato chips. "Sarah was an elegant lady and worthy of all the honor and adulation she had received," said Joseph Hess, an Administrator of the Phoebe-Devitt Homes Foundation facility where Knauss lived.
Read more about this topic: Sarah Knauss
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