Edna Parker, the woman who was certified as the world’s oldest person, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Shelbyville, Ind.

Mrs. Parker, a former Indiana schoolteacher, was born April 20, 1893, in Morgan County, Ind. and was 115 years, 120 days old, according to Guinness World Records. Parker has been recognized as the world’s oldest living person since 2007 when Yone Minagawa of Japan, who was older by four months, died. She is followed by Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who turned 115 on Sept. 10.

Parker graduated from Franklin College in 1911 and taught in a two-room schoolhouse until she married Earl Parker after a long friendship: he was her childhood friend and next-door neighbor. Mrs. Parker had been a widow since her husband, Earl, died of heart attack in 1938. The centenarian woman lived alone in their farmhouse until she was 100. Mrs. Parker was active as she approached and passed 100 years. Her grandsons said that even at that age, she could still climb a ladder to fix a light. She spent her last years at the Heritage House Convalescent Center in Shelbyville.

Her survivors include two sons and 31 other descendants: five grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and 13 great-great-grandchildren.

Stephen Coles, who maintains list of world's oldest people and has performed six autopsies on people older than 100, said Parker was the 14th oldest validated supercentenarian in history. Coles said Parker's great nephew, Jonathan Fateley of Manhattan, Kan., notified him of the death on Wednesday.

Mrs. Parker surely knew how to live her life: she did not drink alcohol or smoke, and led an active life. Studies have shown that siblings of centenarians have higher survival, death rate ½ of normal cohort.