Violet Brown spent much of her life cutting sugarcane in the fields around her home in western Jamaica. She attended church regularly, avoids pork and chicken and celebrated her 117th birthday last month.
On Saturday, she is believed to have become the world’s oldest living person following the death of Emma Morano of Italy, born Nov. 29, 1899.
Brown told The Associated Press she is surprised but grateful to have lived this long.
“This is what God has given me, so I have to take it – long life,” Brown said in an interview in her home in the town of Duanvale.
Brown is considered to be the oldest person in the world with credible birth documentation, according to Robert Young, director of the super centenarian research and database division at Gerontology Research Group, a network of volunteer researchers into the world’s oldest people. Its website says she was born on March 10, 1900.