Mamie Rearden, the oldest person in the United States, died on Saturday. A native of Edgefield, S.C., she was 114, reports the Huffington Post.
"My mom was not president of the bank or anything, but she was very instrumental in raising a family and being a community person," said Sara Rearden, her youngest child. "Everybody can't go be president of a bank or president of a college, but we feel just as proud of her in her role as housewife and particularly as mother and homemaker."
Mamie Rearden, who was married to her husband Oacy for 59 years until his death in 1979, raised 11 children, 10 of whom survive, Sara Rearden said. She lived in the family homestead with a son and a daughter on land that had been in the family since her father's accumulation of acreage made him one of the area's largest black landowners.
Her father sent her off to earn a teaching certificate at Bettis Academy on the far side of the county, spending an entire day on a loaded wagon to reach the school along dirt roads, her daughter said. She taught for several years until becoming pregnant with her third child.
Read more at the Huffington Post.