Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
ST. LOUIS, Aug 23, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Hester Rachel Walls-Davis, one of the oldest women in the world -- who lived in a nursing home with her 92-year-old daughter -- has died in St. Louis at 110.
Walls-Davis uttered her last words Friday, her daughter, Lola Umstead, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
"She went away in her sleep," Umstead said. "She had a strong heart, no high blood pressure. She only took one pill a day. I guess she just wore out."
The Gerontology Research Group of Inglewood, Calif., lists only 24 people in the United States who are at least 110.
Walls-Davis was born in Huntingdon, Tenn., in 1896. She left school after the sixth grade.
She married briefly in Huntingdon, then divorced and moved to St. Louis in 1919 to live with an older sister.
A domestic worker and an active churchwoman, she remarried in 1951. Her second husband, Sam Davis, died in 1962. She still wore his wedding ring at the time of her death.
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2006 by United Press International
