Resident Is 114, Nursing Home Reports

Officials at the St. Sophia Geriatric Center say they have a resident two years older than Anna Eliza Williams, proclaimed last week by the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest living human.

Williams, a former domestic servant who lives in a nursing home in Wales, is 112.

But St. Sophia officials say that Augusta Holtz is 114, even though relatives lack a birth certificate to prove it. Guinness officials consider no claims without documentation.

A daughter, Gertrude Dickinson, said her mother was born Aug. 3, 1871. “I’m sure going to tell her about this,” Dickinson said after learning her mother might be an unofficial challenger for the record.

Holtz, who was married in 1900, was described by her two surviving daughters and others as mentally alert.

“She’s always saying she hopes it isn’t true what they say about only the good dying young,” said Penny Pohlman, a social services worker at St. Sophia.

Holtz was born in Germany and grew up on a farm near Troy, Ill. She moved to St. Louis at the turn of the century. Her husband died in 1923 and she has outlived two sons.

Williams was declared the world’s oldest person after the Japanese record holder, Shigechiyo Izumi, died at age 120.