My paternal grandmother was born in 1899. Alas, I didn’t often ask her about what her life was like when she was growing up.

My great-grandmother died in 1983 at the age of 96, so she was not only alive in the 1800s, but was 13 when the century ended, so she must have remembered it pretty well.

And I was 13 in 1983, so I remember her pretty well.

Unfortunately, being a kid at the time, I didn't think to ask her what her childhood was like, and I don't know how much she could have told me, as she was deaf and not very lucid by then. Still, I wish I had tried.

My great grandmother was born in 1888 and died in 1987. Traveled to Minnesota by covered wagon when she was young, lived to see the shuttle explode. I have a lot of memories of her, she was a quiet Lutheran farm woman with a strong German accent. I don't remember very much conversation unfortunately, family gatherings were about cooking, eating and being in each other's presence, not a lot of meaningful conversation beyond weather and sports. I was 20 when she passed away and I inherited one of her cookbooks, which was really mostly newspaper clippings of dessert recipes and a few notes about harvests and who helped. On the last page is a remedy: Give an animal a tablespoon of kerosene to cure it of bloat. (Please do not take this advice)

My grandfather was born in the early 1900's. He talked of driving his fathers' horse and buggy team on Sunday's. His father was a minister in rural South Carolina and would do a circuit on Sunday's to visit several churches. He had a few amusing stories about some church members that fancied his father and of the time the horses got into green alfalfa and developed upset stomachs on the way to the next church. Requiring a change of clothes for all the unluckly passengers...
He also told us about visiting the Worlds Fair and having pizza for the first time.

I met and spent some time with both my great grandparents (my mom's paternal grandparents). I was born in 1971, and spent time with them when I was 4 or 5 - they were OLD, to my young eyes. They had a dairy farm near Medford, OR. My great grandfather died when I was still young, but my great grandmother, who I always remembered, was "two years older than the year" made it to the late 80's/early 90's. My great grandfather was a bit older than her.

I met a friend of my grandmother's around 1987. I later discovered that she was a friend of Doris Lessing. My grandmother was born in 1912; her friend, in 1896 - in the territory that would become Zimbabwe, then run by the British South Africa Company and not even named Southern Rhodesia. She had lived through both world wars, the colony's self-governing years, the rise and collapse of the Federation, Ian Smith's UDI in 1965, and the Bush War that followed. In 1980, in her eighties, she saw the country gain independence and take the name Zimbabwe - the entire colonial period, from its beginning to its end. She died the year that Mandela was freed in neighbouring South Africa but not before the abolition of apartheid. It's remarkable to consider the span of her life - the invention and commercialisation of flight to the space age, the atomic age, the computer age. The one thing I envy most is that she would have seen Africa (she had travelled and lived in Namibia, Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana and Mozambique) before the 'Great White Hunters'.

I met this guy named George Saunders who was born in 1898. When I met him, he was dying in a nursing home in Colorado Springs. His wife didn't want many people to visit him. I went in the room with a contingent of DeMolays. I was very involved in the Order of DeMolay (and later the Masonic lodge and the Scottish Rite) and Saunders had been the Grand Secretary of the national DeMolay organization (and the Imperial Recorder for the national Shriners organization) for most of the postwar period. His signature was on millions of certificates and documents. I couldn't believe he was still alive in the mid-90s. He was very frail and thin, bedridden. I'll never forget his wife said "What you are seeing is the ravages of time."

When asked what the greatest invention was in her lifetime, my Grandma, born in 1899 and lived into the 80’s said, without a moment’s hesitation, “That’s so easy. Kleenex.”

Great-grand father, born in 1881 and great-grand-mother as well, born in the 1890s. He died when I was 9 and she died a few years later, but I met both several times as a child visiting them in the East of France when in vacation. His whole family (140+ descendants) celebrated his 100th birthday ! He died a few months later, and my great grand-mother died at 99. He was walking in the mountains several hours a week up until the end. As kids, we would visit them in their room, and I particularly remember her talking about the whole family, aunt this, uncle that, the kids of whoever, etc. Always smiling. He on the other hand was not so much the talkative kind.

I knew, and faintly remember, my great-grand aunt Clara as a child. She was born in 1876. Lived with my grandparents and died when I was 4.

I'm 50 and my maternal great-grandmothers were born in 1890 and 1898 and were both alive when I was a kid. Unfortunately both passed away before I was old enough to have a meaningful conversation with them.

I don't remember many conversations with my great-grandmother but her younger sister, my "Aunt Jennie" was born in 1896 and died in 1995, so I saw her fairly frequently when I was in high school and college. One very strong memory of her from the early nineties:

Whenever she came over for dinner, she was dressed up, in a dress and stockings with black old-lady lace up shoes with heels, which I've only ever seen on her and my great-grandmother. If the weather was inclement, she wore "rubbers" which were black and covered her whole shoe and zipped up the back.

One time she was getting ready to leave, and was seated and struggling to zip one. I said something like how they looked kind of old, and she was like, "nonsense they're perfectly good, I've had them since the war!"

"Vietnam?" I asked.

She gave me quite a look and said sternly, "World War II."

Maternal grandparents were both born in the 1890's, and were first gen Americans from German immigrants to NY. Grandfather was tall, and one of 6 kids in his family. He joined the Coast Guard, chased down rum runners during the period of prohibition in the US, and went on to serve in WWII, somehow surviving the battle of Guadalcanal. Apparently other direct relatives of his were on the other side in WWII. Meanwhile grandmother was a tiny quiet powerhouse who lived to over 100, and was very physically active (and a former phys ed teacher) most of her life. She won multiple golf trophies, which my mom just found and I can't wait to see. I've been prompting stories from my mom about her upbringing, and the intrigue has me wishing I could ask them so many questions.

not myself, but my wife grew up with a nanny who was born in 1899 and was 7 during the great 1906 earthquake in San Francisco!

My grandmother was born in the late 1800s. To my recollection, 1895. We once talked about her memories of the sinking of the Titanic. The sort of historical/cultural thing that strikes me most about her life: As a girl, she rode in a covered wagon from one state to another -- as transportation, no other option. As an old woman, she flew in a Boing 737 passenger jet.

I'm nearing 50, and I vividly remember my great-grandmother. Her face. Her hair. Her eyes and smile . She was born in 1891 and passed in 1989 when she was 98, and I was 13. I remember that until the very end, she was bright, quick-witted, and full of laughs. She loved to sing, dance, and play the piano. She never suffered fools. I know there are so many memories I've forgotten, but I will always remember her saying, "You can do whatever you want. You can eat, drink, smoke... but you only do it in moderation."

She enjoyed the occasional drink and cigar well into her 90's. Also, as a side note, I think she had the most lovely name... Genevieve Anastasia.

I am 73 this year. My mother's mother was born in NJ in 1893 and my mother's father in Count Cork, Ireland in 1890. My father's father was born in Canada in 1888 and my father's mother was born in New York state in 1895. I had a grandparent on both sides who was an immigrant, and I'm pretty sure the Canadian one just slipped in over the border.

My father was born in NY in 1915 and my mother in NJ in1916. My father's father was a Wobbly, a labor organizer, and a drunk. My father's sister Estelle died of a burst appendix at age 6 because my father's family couldn't afford to pay for a hospital. No one in the family ever got over it. My father's father died of cirrhosis when my father was 14. My father had to leave school, never to finish the 8th grade, to become the sole support for his surviving mother and brother. He never returned to school, never got a GED. He was haunted the rest of his life by his lack of "education." In spite of this, he became a successful screenwriter, later in life joining Mensa, and eventually becoming elected president of the Writer's Guild of America West in 1971. Like my grandfather, he led the Guild through a strike and contract negotiations just before he died at age 58.

Now ask me why I vote to support universal healthcare, child welfare, free education through college, school lunches, and all the many other vital social services that conservatives consider "evil." You should probably sit down first; it'll take a while. But suffice to say, if my father's family had enjoyed a decent social safety network, I would have met my Aunt Estelle. And that's the biggest difference between someone born in 1890 and someone born in 1990; not the airplanes, or the cell phones, or the autos, or the 10,000 channels of mostly mediocre entertainment. It's a social order than takes care of its citizens to a degree that would have flabbergasted by grandfather and that he dreamed of and fought for (and I mean literally fought for) as a labor organizer. And we are actively destroying it.

My grandmother (who died in 1986) was born in the late 1890s. She was the last living grandparent I remember. When we were cleaning out the house after both of my parents passed, I found a bunch of letters my grandmother had written in the 1940s. She had divorced my grandfather and was trying to make it as a single mother with three kids (my mom was the eldest). It wasn’t easy.

My great grandmother was born in the 1880's. When i was a young teen, she was still an active part of family events. She loved to play penny-ante poker, and the adults would let me play because I was a precocious kid who enjoyed playing cards in a card playing family. I remember her as warm and kind, but not easily bamboozled or bluffed. She was a wonderful matriarch.

My great-grandmother was born in 1896. I know I had some kind of exchange with her, but she spent most of her time in bed at the old folks' home. Weirdly: one of her sisters-in-law was Gertrude Clarke Whittall, who has a fascinating Wikipedia page. She helped found the position of US poet laureate, was friends with Robert Frost, and donated 5 Stradivari to the Library of Congress.

My step-great-grandmother was Gertrude Goldie McLaughlin, born July 4, 1888, who married my great-grandfather when she was a nanny for him (after his first wife died). She traveled to the Dakotas from Iowa with him in a covered wagon, and told the story about how her son Wayne fell out of the wagon and they didn't realize it for a couple miles — they circled back to find him in one of the wheel ruts, still safely wrapped up.

I remember she ate a banana every day (her favorite food by far, she talked about how amazing they were) and had a jar of graham crackers with a painted lid on them in her kitchen for any kids that came over (they were delicious). We visited her in Clarinda, Iowa many times, and she lived to be just short of 102, in her own home to nearly the very end.

I remember my mom asking her how she was feeling, and she replied, "Well, I'm ready to die" and chuckled quietly to herself.

Boulder, CO. We lived two doors down from a very old man who claimed to have been 14 years old in the Civil War. his name was Mr. Bellman. He had a photo and some good stories and was crusty and cantankerous. This was in the mid-to-late 1950s when my sibs and I were between the ages of four and 10.
He had a large collection of rattlesnake rattles and some very cool rocks, some of which he claimed had gold in them. I don’t remember asking him any useful questions, mostly about rattle snakes as I remember. Most of the time he just told us to go away. He gave us toothbrushes on Halloween. I’m guessing he was about 100 at that point.