BIOGRAPHY

Léontine Rousselot was born in the commune of La Bouillie in the Côtes-d’Armor department of Brittany in northwestern France, on 23 July 1905. Her parents were Louis Rousselot (1861–1914) and Marie Josephe Le Febvre (1866–1947). She had at least six siblings: Adrien Louis Marie (1891–1954), Louis Marie Joseph (1893–1894), Marie Louise Cécile (1894–1975), Marie Ange (1898–1987), Louis Marie Joseph (1901–1902), and Joséphine Marie Sainte (born 1908).

At the age of seven, she left the town of La Bouillie for Saint-Alban. She soon began helping her father deliver potatoes to the port of Dahouët, accompanying him on his rounds with a wheelbarrow. In 1914, her father passed away, and the war began. Her two brothers were drafted, leaving Léontine to take on household responsibilities and help run the farm.

In the 1920s, she moved to Paris with her sister Joséphine, where both found work as domestic workers. Léontine eventually entered the service of the writer Jean Richepin. She also worked for an American couple who invited her to move to the United States with them, but she declined, unwilling to venture so far from home.

She later returned to La Bouillie and settled there with her mother and sister Marie-Louise. Following her sister’s death in 1977, Léontine moved into the Vauclair residential care home in Pléneuf-Val-André. In 2009, she accepted a place at the La Roseraie nursing home, also in Pléneuf-Val-André.

Léontine Rousselot passed away in the commune of Pléneuf-Val-André in the Côtes-d’Armor department of Brittany in northwestern France, on 28 March 2016, at the age of 110 years, 249 days.

RECOGNITION

Her age was validated by the European Supercentenarian Organisation (ESO) on 3 July 2023.

ATTRIBUTION

* Léontine Marie Josèphe ROUSSELOT (1905-2016) – PORTAIL DES APPLICATIONS DU CG22

* Fiche ancêtre : ROUSSELOT Léontine Marie Joseph – Mes ancêtres et leur généalogie

* “La Roseraie. Léontine Rousselot fête ses 105 ans” – Le Télégramme, 26 July 2010

* “Aînés. La vice-doyenne de Bretagne vit à Pléneuf-Val-André” – Actu.fr, 18 August 2015

GALLERY