World’s oldest person dies in New York City, aged 116
Jones' death makes Emma Morano-Martinuzzi, a 116-year-old woman in Italy, the oldest living person, according to the Gerontology Research Group. Jones, who was born in the southern U.S. state of Alabama in 1899, was the daughter of sharecroppers and granddaughter of slaves. After graduating from high school she moved north in 1922 to New Jersey and then New York, where she worked as a housekeeper and childcare provider, according to Guinness World Records and the Vandalia Senior Center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, where she lived.