Hester Ford, Oldest Living American, Dies At 115 (Or 116)

Hester Ford, who was America’s oldest person living, died at her home in Charlotte, N.C., on April 17. Ford was at least 115 years old, though some records say she was possibly 116.

Ford lived through sharecropping, the 1918 flu pandemic, the Great Depression, World War I and II, Jim Crow laws, the civil rights movement and the coronavirus pandemic.

After growing up on a farm, she got married at age 14 to John Ford, and the pair purchased a farm and started raising their family in Lancaster, S.C. Together they had 12 children, four of whom are still alive, 68 grandchildren, 125 great-grandchildren and at least 120 great-great-grandchildren.

“She was a pillar and stalwart to our family and provided much needed love, support and understanding to us all,” Tanisha Patterson-Powe, Ford’s great-granddaughter, said in a statement on Facebook. “She was the seed that sprouted leaves and branches which is now our family. God saw fit to make her the matriarch of our family and blessed us to be her caretakers and recipients of her legacy.”

Patterson-Powe told NPR’s Weekend Edition that her family relocated from Lancaster to Charlotte after a family member was brutally killed in the 1950s and her great-grandparents worried what might happen next if they stayed. She notes that lynchings were prevalent.

After living in Charlotte for a few years, the couple decided to purchase a home there.

“It was the early ’60s. And if you can imagine a Black family being able to purchase a home during that time — what a significant accomplishment if you really process that,” Patterson-Powe said. “That’s the home that my great-grandmother peacefully passed in last Saturday.”