Maria Jeronimo, 129; Considered Oldest Woman

Maria do Carmo Jeronimo, a former slave whose lack of a birth certificate was the only barrier to her recognition as the world’s oldest woman, has died. Church records list her age as 129.

Jeronimo died of a stroke late Wednesday at the University Hospital in Itajuba, 200 miles northwest of Rio, hospital officials said Thursday.

According to baptismal records, Jeronimo was born in the southeastern town of Carmo de Minas, in Minas Gerais state, March 5, 1871. She won her freedom when she was 17, in 1888, when Brazil became the last country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery.

Although no longer a slave, she stayed in Minas Gerais. For six decades she worked as a housemaid for the family of historian Jose Armelim Bernardo Guimaraes, which in recent years tried unsuccessfully to have her recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest woman.

The publication requires a birth certificate or other undisputed proof of age, because some past claims of longevity have turned out to be phony. The oldest person ever with authenticated records was Jeanne Calment of France, who died Aug. 4, 1997 at the age of 122.

Still, local record books listed Jeronimo as the world’s oldest woman, and she was honored at a Carnival parade in Rio commemorating the abolition of slavery. In 1997, Pope John Paul II personally blessed her during a visit to Rio.

During an interview with The Times five years ago when she was 124, Jeronimo could still recall the horrors of slavery--the rapes, the constant sickness, the deaths and the families split apart. She bore scars on her back as a constant reminder of whippings.

Her father was a “producer,” a slave selected to sire children, a common practice on plantations. Her mother worked in the sugar cane fields and died when Jeronimo was about 8.

After emancipation, she worked as a nanny. She spent the last six decades living with the Guimaraes family, who hired her when she was 70. She helped raise 12 Guimaraes children.

She never married. She never went to a hospital until she was 120. At 127, after receiving a special invitation from the mayor of Rio, she finally saw the ocean. She pronounced it “cold and salty.”

In her final years, Jeronimo had a series of strokes that left her in a nearly vegetative state. Before the strokes incapacitated her, she told an interviewer that she had only one wish left.

“Now,” she said, “I just want to see God.”