The world's oldest living person, the daughter of sharecroppers and granddaughter of slaves, celebrated her 116th birthday on Monday in New York.

Susannah Mushatt Jones marked the occasion privately with family but a public celebration is planned for Tuesday, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

Jones was born in Alabama in 1899 and after graduating from high school moved north in 1922 to New Jersey and then New York, where she worked as a housekeeper and childcare provider, according to Guinness World Records and the Vandalia Senior Center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, where she lives.