| Katherine Gomery | |
 | |
| Birth: | 24 February 1905 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Death: | 27 December 2015 Washington, United States |
| Age: | 110 years, 306 days |
| Country: |  CAN USA
|
| Validated | |
Katherine Anna Gomery (née Knieling; 24 February 1905 – 27 December 2015) was a validated Canadian-American supercentenarian who was the second-to-last known survivor of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.
Biography[]
Gomery was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her father, Adam Knieling, was a German aristocrat who renounced his title to marry the woman he loved, Caroline. When she was a baby, the family moved to San Francisco, California, where they survived the 1906 earthquake. After the quake, the father helped to rebuild San Francisco, particularly Chinatown. She is listed in the 1910 census, living with her parents in San Francisco. She then moved to Germany, and as a child survived World War I, starvation, and the Spanish Flu.
Gomery married Fred Warias in the 1920s, and had a son, Al. Fred died in a construction accident. She moved back to Canada in 1927 and then to the United States in the 1930s, where she married Joseph Gomery in 1936 and had a second son, Victor. Joseph died in 1963. She worked as a blueprint clerk in Los Angeles and retired in the late 1960s, before moving to Washington in the early 1970s.[1]
Gomery became the penultimate survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake after the death of Ruth Newman on 29 July 2015, although she was not discovered by researchers until after her death. She died on 27 December 2015 at the age of 110 years, 306 days. William Del Monte then became the last survivor of the earthquake until his own death on 11 January 2016.
References[]
- 2019 validations Gerontology Research Group