World's oldest living person Susannah Mushatt Jones dies aged 116

Susannah Mushatt Jones was born in 1899 in the US state of Alabama. Credit: Guinness World Records

The world's oldest person, Susannah Mushatt Jones, has died aged 116 in New York.

Born in Alabama on July 6 1899, Jones was one of 10 children born to Mary and Callie Mushatt.

Her parents were sharecroppers who picked cotton on the same land as her grandparents, one of whom was once a slave.

Susannah pictured with her official Guinness World Records certificate awarded in July 2015. Credit: Reuters

At the age of 24, she moved to New York and began working as a live-in housekeeper and nanny.

Known affectionately as Tee, she married Henry Jones in 1928 but divorced him five years later. She never had children of her own but had more 100 nieces and nephews.

Jones, who retired in 1965, had previously said that lots of sleep was the secret to her longevity and that she had never smoked or drank alcohol.

Her death makes Emma Morano-Martinuzzi, a 116-year-old woman in Italy, the oldest living person, according to the Gerontology Research Group.