Mrs.
Oberia Coffin is an American woman who is another claimant to the title of oldest person ever. She claimed a birth of 1 December 1883 by Social Security Administration records, making her 122 years old in 2006; however, a single SSA record is not acceptable as a sole means of documentation as far as an individual's date of birth is concerned. Mr. Robert Young, of the GRG, checked census records for a match, but could not find anything. His theory was that since Mrs. Coffin was an African-American, there would not be reliable census data from 100 or more years ago. At the time, the oldest verified living person was 116-year-old Elizabeth Bolden. She, unlike Coffin, had had her name located in the 1900 Census records.
Born in Dalby Springs, Texas, Coffin apparently remembered working in cotton fields when she was a young woman. A stranger, Gwendolyn Traylor, became her guardian when Coffin was reportly being left for dead in c. 1996. Traylor has stated that she believes Coffin's claim.
Said to be the oldest of more than 10 children, Coffin moved into a nursing home in De Kalb, Texas, in 1992. She also had a leg amputated. In her final years, Coffin was blind and deaf, and eventually died on 18 October 2006 at the claimed age of 122 years, 321 days. At the time of her death, she had been the second-oldest claimant in the US and seventh-oldest in the world.
