Major Jewel McDonald of Louisville, Mississippi, born Nov. 1, 1915, is the oldest verified living man in the United States at age 110, according to his entry in the Gerontology Research Group’s supercentenarian database.
His age was validated by the Gerontology Research Group on Nov. 2, 2025, after verification by Oliver Trim and Dr. Waclaw Jan Kroczek, and by LongeviQuest on Dec. 10, 2025, after verification by Eli Logan and Tamás Bényei. He became a supercentenarian on his 110th birthday in November 2025.
McDonald was born in Louisville, Winston County, to parents Henry and Georgia McDonald. He was one of 13 children raised by a single mother. The family relied on a mule and wagon for transportation in rural Mississippi.
“I don’t know how we made it. We didn’t have no way of getting around, no more than a mule and a wagon. That’s all we had,”
McDonald said in a February 2024 interview with WCBI.
Longevity runs in the family. Nearly all of his sisters lived past 100, according to the same interview. His grandfather, born into slavery, was recorded as living to 106, though the precise age remained uncertain. McDonald joins a small but growing cluster of verified supercentenarians whose family histories reveal repeated cross-generational longevity, a pattern that longevity researchers have flagged for study.
In 1941, during the Great Migration, McDonald left segregated Mississippi for Ohio. He settled in the Cleveland area and worked for the Kroger Company until retirement. In 1982 he returned to Louisville, where he has lived since, according to his LongeviQuest profile.
In retirement he fished the Tombigbee River. After one large catch he donated the surplus to his church for a fish fry. The gathering grew into an annual community event, LongeviQuest reported.
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McDonald married twice and has six children, including a son born when he was in his 80s, along with a stepson and five grandchildren. At 70 he married Brenda, then 35. He has said his prayer was to live long enough to raise his children. His pattern of late-life family life echoes other record-setting married couples whose longevity intertwined with family milestones.
“I asked the Lord, I said I want you to bless me with children then I want you to bless me to be able to stay with them till they get old enough to take care of themselves. And I wanna thank the Lord for that. He did that,”
he told WCBI.
He has lived through Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Spanish flu, World War II, the Jim Crow era, the civil rights movement and the COVID-19 pandemic.
McDonald became the oldest verified living man in the United States after the deaths of older peers, including Chester Meros of Maryland, who died July 9, 2026, at 110 years and 360 days, according to the Baltimore Sun’s obituary for Meros. Both LongeviQuest and the Gerontology Research Group currently list McDonald in that position.
He continues to live in Louisville and has offered simple advice to younger generations: slow down.
“The young generation is going in the wrong direction. Slow down. Slow down. See we in too big of a hurry. The Bible say those that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength,”
he said in the 2024 WCBI interview.
