In search of the first French supercentenarians (1830–1929)
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In metropolitan France, no one officially reached the age of 110 until the last quarter of the twentieth century. This is surprising since this was not the case for Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. The purpose of this article is to stimulate the search for authentic unknown supercentenarians who died between 1830 and 1929. One way to test this hypothesis is to go through old newspapers that widely reported on cases of longevity. I found several hundred articles indicating the alleged existence of people who had reached or exceeded the age of 110. Old newspapers indicated the identity and the place of residence of the candidates. The search, which is still ongoing, has already turned up forty-eight death certificates indicating an age of 110 or older. For each of these alleged supercentenarians, an age validation or invalidation process was undertaken. Data from census, parish, and civil registration records often, but not always, provide a complete family reconstruction for each selected case. To date, no true supercentenarians have been formally validated on the basis of these strict criteria. The hypothesis remains open because, at the time, not all supercentenarian candidates were necessarily the subject of an article in old newspapers.
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