Oldest American who lived through two World Wars, 19 presidents and put her longevity down to 'walking and chocolate' dies at age 113

The oldest American has died at her Massachusetts home at age 113.

Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group senior consultant Robert Young says Goldie Michelson died Friday. 

He says she'd been 'very frail and confined to bed' and hadn't been seen in public for a long time.

Michelson was born in Elizabethgrad, Russia, which is now a part of Ukraine, in 1902 and moved to the United States when she was two years old. 

In her lifetime she saw two World Wars, 19 presidents, the invention of microwaves, computers, penicillin and more. 

'She would say, "It's not what I've seen, it's what I haven't seen: Man's inhumanity to man, why hasn't that changed?"' her granddaughter Marilyn Melton told the Boston Globe. 

On her 110th birthday she revealed she never intended to live as long as she did. 

Often she was asked what the secret to her longevity was and she replied: walking and chocolate. 

'I was a great walker — four or five miles every morning, weather permitting.

'I never used a car if I could walk. One of the great joys of life was when I sold my car,' she said.

She said in 2012 that she 'never smoked or drank', but she loved chocolate and ate lots of it. 

In her youth she worked in Worcester, Massachusetts, about 50 miles west of Boston, as a social worker. 

She taught religious education and directed plays at local synagogues. 

Her relatives said she had a love of the theater, which only rivaled the love of her family.

She said she'd often travel into New York City with her husband David Michelson to catch as many shows as they could over the weekend. 

'We’d get a couple of modest tickets and see a matinee Saturday, another play Saturday night, and on Sunday morning we’d come home,' she said.