A woman believed to be the world’s oldest Facebook user has died at the age of 114, her family said.
Anna Stoehr of Plainview, Minnesota, gained widespread attention in October when she said she’d had to lie about her age to sign up for the social network.
Facebook responded by celebrating her impressive longevity on her birthday.
“She turned 114 in October of this year and received a huge bouquet of 114 flowers from Facebook after they learned that she was not able to sign up without putting in a fake age of 90 or 95,” Harlan Stoehr, her 84-year-old eldest son, told CNN on Tuesday.
He told CNN that his mother — who leaves 5 children, 27 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren — died Sunday.
No phone, no car, no electricity
She was born in 1900, the year before the assassination of President William McKinley and the death of Queen Victoria. Her family had no telephone, car or electricity at the time.
Facebook isn’t set up to accommodate such venerable users. The network’s sign-up page only allows people to put dates of birth going back to 1905.
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg had attempted to reach Anna Stoehr after his company sent an apology about the age restriction, according to her daughter-in-law Marlene Stoehr.
“She was not available when he had his assistant call to get hold of her because of a medical appointment, and then Mark Zuckerberg was out of the country so it never happened,” she said. “But it was an exciting time for everyone with all the attention.”
The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Lived on a farm until she was 112
Facebook isn’t the only area where Anna Stoehr stood out — she was also the oldest person in Minnesota.
She even threw out the first pitch at a Minnesota Twins game (via a video-taped throw) at the age of 113, according to her son.
“They asked her if she would pitch it overhand or underhand, and she said, ‘Overhand, of course, it’s baseball,'” he said.
Harlan Stoehr said his mother was always very active and had lived on a farm near Elgin, Minnesota, from 1936 until 2013. She was left alone there after the death of her husband in 1998. At the age of 112, she moved to an apartment in a retirement community in Plainview.
“She loved gardening and always had huge flower gardens and strawberries,” her son said. “She grew all kinds of things, and when an apple tree on her farm blew down, she planted another one. She was 105 years old at the time.”
Signed up for Facebook at 113
Her interest in getting onto Facebook at the age of 113 grew out of a friendship with a Verizon salesman.
Joseph Ramireza was selling an iPhone to Stoehr’s 85-year-old son, who started talking about his mother. Ramireza said he had to meet her.
“She’s become something of a kindred spirit,” Ramireza told CNN affiliate KARE-TV in October.
He helped her use FaceTime to video chat with friends on an iPad and has been teaching her to use email and Google search.
When Facebook didn’t have her birth year as an option, Ramireza helped Stoehr write a letter to Zuckerberg — on a typewriter.
“I’m still here,” she said in the letter.
