UNTIL HER death this week aged 115, Edna Parker, a former Indiana schoolteacher and farmer's wife, was certified as the world's oldest person.
Parker had held the rank of world's oldest person since August 14th, 2007 when her rival for the accolade, Yone Minagawa of Japan, died. She was four months older than Parker.
With Parker's passing, the new holder of the world's-oldest title is Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who was 115 on September 10th.
Dr Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group said the second-oldest person in the world now is a Los Angeles woman: Gertrude Baines, the daughter of former slaves, who is the oldest person of African descent in the world. Baines is 114 and lives in a nursing home.
Parker was born in 1893, in Morgan County, Indiana. She graduated from Franklin College in 1911 and taught in a two-room schoolhouse until she married Earl Parker, her childhood sweetheart and next-door neighbour.
As a farmer's wife, she rose daily at 4am to make breakfast for the family and hired hands and to do her chores, which included maintaining the barn and butchering chickens for Sunday supper.
She outlived Earl, who died in 1938, and their two sons. She never remarried. Her survivors include five grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and 13 great-great-grandchildren.
Parker lived by herself on the family farm until she was 100. At that lofty age, she could still climb a ladder to fix a light, grandson Donald Parker said this week. But when her family learned that she was still climbing ladders, they persuaded her to move in with relatives.
She spent her last years at a nursing home about 25 miles southeast of Indianapolis. A fellow resident was Sandy Allen, who Guinness World Records considered the world's tallest woman, at 231cm (7ft 7in). Allen died in August aged 53.
Last year, Parker helped Guinness to record another feat when she met another supercentenarian,Bertha Fry, then 113 years old, of Muncie, Indiana. The meeting took place at Parker's nursing home about two weeks after Parker's 114th birthday.
A Guinness representative on hand to witness the event said their combined age of 227 was "the highest aggregate age of two people meeting each other".
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels commended the two women, who both grew up on small Indiana farms, became schoolteachers and ate a lot of meat and starch over the course of their exceptionally long lives. Parker especially enjoyed eggs, sausage, bacon and fried chicken.
"I guess we'll have to rethink lard," the governor quipped after hearing about her high-fat diet.
Parker, who credited her longevity to various factors, including education, remained relatively free of health problems in her last years. According to family members, she took few medications and at 113 could still walk.
She retained a sense of humour, evident at her 114th birthday celebration when she remarked that 114 was "several years too long. I probably knew George Washington."
• Edna Parker: born April 20th, 1893; died November 26th, 2008