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    The oldest person you met

    The oldest person you met, not by age but by their time of birth. And by "met", I mean consciously, not your 101-yrar-old granny who towered over your crib.

    I think the oldest one was the old guy who loved a few houses down from my granny's. His name was Aschenbrenner, and I was somewhere around 6-8 when my grandmother told me, after having a short chat with him on the street, that he was 90 years old, or thereabouts. Assuming I was 8 and he 90, Aschenbrenner was born in 1884. Aschenbrenner was an adult before the first motorcars hit the roads. Maybe Aschenbrenner met some old guy aged 90 when he was eight years old. That guy would as a kid celebrated the Prussian victories over Napoleon at Waterloo, and as an older man see the unification of Germany.

    My grandmother herself was vintage 1895, and used to tell me many stories from her childhood and youth, as well as of WW1 and her marriage soon after, and the 1920s. I'm so grateful to have heard stories from what now is more than 100 years ago. And it makes me feel old that the equivalent of my granny recalling rejected suitors in 1918 is today's equivalent of a granny telling her grandchildren about 1953.

    #2
    My maternal grandfather was born in 1884, and while I have vague recollections of having been introduced to somewhat older neighbours and the like, he is surely the one I recall most vividly. He told us that he had never seen a train or motor vehicle until he left his village at the age of 18 or so. He spent the years up to that time in a village of fewer than 50 and died in a city of more than eight million.

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      #3
      My maternal grandmother died at 96 in 2003. She'd seen 2 world wars and flight progress from a few hundred yards to moon landings and intercontinental flights.

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        #4
        There was a Walter Gabriel type figure in Dore known locally as 'Old Larty.' I must have been five or six. He claimed to have fought in the Ashanti Wars in the 1870s (and had medals to prove it) so I reckon he must have been in his mid-90s in 1955.

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          #5
          I definitely met nuns born in the late 1880's. Nuns basically live forever. The retired principal of my secondary school knew someone who was 10 at the start of the Famine. Stories about farmers guarding fields of animal fodder, with shotguns, because it was more important to feed cattle for export than keep your neighbours alive.

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            #6
            I knew Amor was going to win this.

            In my experience, progressive nuns die younger than their traditional sisters. Just one of many ways life is unfair.

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              #7
              Great gran was from the 1890s. Though more 1640s in calculated malevolence and vitriol.

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                #8
                1890s great-gran here too. She was very nice though and always used to make fairy cakes for us.

                Might as well mention that grandfather was 103 yesterday, seemingly settled into residential home with 99 year old grandmother. Other grandmother is 100 in December.

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                  #9
                  Mam's last partner was significantly older than she was and I met his mother a couple of times. Judging by what I can piece together, she would have been born in about 1899.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                    I definitely met nuns born in the late 1880's. Nuns basically live forever. The retired principal of my secondary school knew someone who was 10 at the start of the Famine. Stories about farmers guarding fields of animal fodder, with shotguns, because it was more important to feed cattle for export than keep your neighbours alive.
                    This. I have been wondering for a while now if there is anyone alive who ever met a famine victim and this confirms it.

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                      #11
                      Paternal Grandad was born in 1894. Here he is (sorry, probably a big photo):

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                        #12
                        I guess my great grandma was born in the 19th Century, but I can’t recall exactly when. I’ll have to ask my dad. She died in 1985 or around then, so I remember her. That was the first funeral I ever attended.

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                          #13
                          My great grandmother would have been born around 1870.

                          We went over to Ireland 3 times in the 60s, when I'd have been 7-9. The first time I met her would be 1966 or 67, when she was very old, but compos mentis and leaning on the garden gate when my mother went up to introduce herself (she'd not seen her or communicated since the 1940s). By the time of our third visit she was bedridden and possibly had dementia, as she kept singing out "Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight to you all". Everyone said she was 99. So I didn't have much in the way of deep chats, but remember her being kind to us when she was still able to prepare food.

                          Oh, I just remembered, she'd had a stroke.

                          I do remember her talking to me and saying what a big fine strapping girl I was for 7, I think that was meant to be complimentary.
                          Last edited by MsD; 29-10-2017, 11:19.

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                            #14
                            Originally posted by Sits View Post
                            Paternal Grandad was born in 1894. Here he is (sorry, probably a big photo):

                            jesus, sits, was your great granddad the best looking man in World war I? Facial symmetry wasn't supposed to be invented until the late 30's.
                            Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 29-10-2017, 10:59.

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                              #15
                              My maternal grandmother died last month, she was 101. Last time I saw her was on her 100th birthday. She was active, lucid and enjoying life up to 99 years old, but went downhill over the past couple of years, she hated being in hospital and mentioned many times that she wish she could just fall asleep and not wake up. The concept of having enough of life is quite a strange one for my middle-aged self to conceive, but I guess if I didn't have the ability or facilities to do what I wanted when I wanted, I would get a bit tired of life as well.

                              Anyway, she died in her sleep with family close at hand but no friends, as they had all died years previously. Funeral was weird as there were no contemporaries or others from her generation, just her 2 remaining daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in attendance. I won't go into her full life, but she was the illegitimate daughter of a Belgian refugee during WW1, who run off, leaving my great-grandmother alone to bring her up.

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                                #16
                                Originally posted by Paul S View Post
                                This. I have been wondering for a while now if there is anyone alive who ever met a famine victim and this confirms it.
                                Paul, the man in question died around 2000.

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                  jesus, sits, was your great granddad the best looking man in World war I? Facial symmetry wasn't supposed to be invented until the late 30's.
                                  That's the only good photo I think he ever had taken. In every other (even in his 30s) he looks old, craggy and miserable. When Mrs. S saw it she didn't believe it was him. My memory is a pretty grumpy old guy with awful lungs. I wonder if something happened in the Great War, I haven't looked up his military record yet.

                                  It's Grandad not Great Grandad. I'm old.

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                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by Paul S View Post
                                    I have been wondering for a while now if there is anyone alive who ever met a famine victim and this confirms it.
                                    My grandfather remembers his grandfather, who came over to England as a boy during the Famine. Apparently he didn't talk about his early experiences, or indeed about much else, but it was referred to when my grandfather asked why he refused to sing or stand up for the national anthem and was prone to saying, "Bugger the King," whenever the royal family were mentioned.

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                                      #19
                                      My grandmother had faint memories of her grandfather, who was a union cavalry general in the Civil War.

                                      It wasn’t so long ago.

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                                        #20
                                        The last union widow died in 2003, the last confederate widow in 2008. It's really not that long ago.

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                                          #21
                                          Technically I met my maternal great-grandfather (born 1893) when I was a toddler in 1975, but as I have no clear memory of him I'll instead say my great aunt (my paternal grandfather's oldest sister) who was born in 1909 and passed away in 2002 at the grand old age of 93.

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                                            #22
                                            My paternal Granny was born in 1899 and made it to 2002. Last time I saw her was her 100th birthday. She gained a little bit of local celebrity as the local Gazette ran a piece on her, revealing that she organised a pie & pea supper to buy then schoolboy Wilf Mannion his first football kit. Wilf read it and promptly turned up at the nursing home with a huge bunch of flowers.

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                                              #23
                                              So far, that's Amor in the lead, and me second, which makes sense.

                                              Not that I'm being competitive or anything (moi?).

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                                                #24
                                                My maternal granddad was born in 1888, I only remember an old man tottering around the house but my older brother remembers him talking about his youth, he was caught up in a firefight at Doyles corner in phibsboro during the 1916 rising. He was a train driver and used to smuggle guns for the rebels during the war of independence in 1922 /23, I wish I knew him better

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                                                  #25
                                                  My granny (1892-1977) signed the Ulster Covenant as a young woman. Later in Life she cheerfully admitted being a bit of a bigot even by the standards of 1912.

                                                  Aged five in 1967 I asked why all the houses in the next street to her were new. She explained that Hitler had blitzed them in 1941- my first intro to WW2

                                                  I spent a couple of student summers in the next village to G-Man's granda's.
                                                  Last edited by Duncan Gardner; 29-10-2017, 15:37.

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