In June 2026, a Snopes reader asked whether a 14-minute YouTube video truly showed interviews with people who were born in the 1800s. The reader emailed, "Is this a fake, AI-generated video? I am so disgusted if it is, because it passes itself off as real colorized history."
That video, which was published May 23 and had received more than 1 million views, was titled "Interviews With People Born in the 1800s! Filmed in 1929 Restored in Color." It purportedly presented eight individual historical clips all recorded in the U.S.
The text description read in part:
Rare interviews with elderly Americans — some over 100 years old — sharing firsthand memories from the 1800s and early 1900s. These are real voices from another era, preserving stories of frontier life, horse-drawn cities, wars, hardship, family traditions, and a rapidly changing America.
Many were already elderly by 1929, offering an extraordinary glimpse into a world now lost to history. Every interview is restored and preserved to keep these memories alive for future generations.
The video truly shows authentic interviews with people born in the 19th century. As such, we rated this claim as true.
A visible watermark reading "MIRC @ SC EDU" confirms the colorized clips originated from black-and-white Fox Movietone originals courtesy of the Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina. The videos on the university's website display raw footage — labeled as "outtakes" — including multiple takes, and are longer than the clips shown in the YouTube video. The article below links to each of the eight original clips.
The YouTube video did, however, contain one inauthentic piece of content. A user appeared to use the Google Gemini artificial-intelligence platform to generate an inauthentic thumbnail image showing a high-quality, colorized view of two men. A SynthID Detector test — a scan that can allegedly confirm whether Google's AI tools created or edited images and videos — returned the answer, "This image contains digital watermarking indicating that most or all of it was edited or generated using Google AI."
Maine's 'three-quarter century club'
The first clip in the YouTube video features elderly men and women gathering for a meeting of Maine's "three-quarter century club." The event occurred at what a newspaper described as the "state fair grounds" on Aug. 26, 1929, in Lewiston.
One man references the people operating the camera and audio equipment when asking another man, "Hey, what can I say to you? He wants me to talk to you." A newspaper published a picture of the same two men — ages 80 and 82 — captioning the photo, in part, "Even the cameraman has to laugh at wise cracks these fellows are pulling."
The latter part of the clip shows women chatting while knitting, including one woman appearing to talk about a man who drove his car into a telephone pole.
Florida octogenarians, Civil War veterans
The second clip originally had the newsreel title "Florida Sunshine Peps Up Old Folk. Octogenarians dance and talk over the Civil War at Lake Worth."
The video begins by showing Elizabeth T. Boyer, 84, announcing the first octogenarian club in Florida. Attendees dance and clap to music. Two Civil War veterans discuss their time in battles, including the death of Union Army Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon.
A Palm Beach Post newspaper article documented 50 attendees at the gathering at First Methodist Church in Lake Worth on Feb. 21, 1929. One part of the story referenced the people filming the event, reading, "Motion picture photographers surprised the old folks and insisted they execute a square dance."
Lydia Steward's 100th birthday
Redlands, California, resident Lydia Steward celebrates her 100th birthday in the YouTube video's third clip. In different takes, she greets people who appear to be family members and dances the waltz. One take features her saying, "This is the happiest day of my life. The first hundred years is the hardest but I am sure it is some consolation I had rather live in California. I don't know creed in any other climate."
A newspaper article recounted the filming: "While motion picture cameras recorded her every movement for millions of theatregoers to view, 'Grandma' Lydia Stewart, for 76 years a resident of California, last week observed her 100th birthday by waltzing with her son-in-law, Redlands' Park Superintendent W. T. Ferguson."
Steward, born Oct. 1, 1829, died on Christmas Day in 1931. An article and picture of her grave confirm the spelling of her last name as Steward, not "Stewart." Her gravestone reads, "102 years young."
Theater producer Daniel Frohman
In the fourth clip, New York theater producer Daniel Frohman says, "Broadway is the most remarkable and picturesque street in the world. I have known Broadway for over 50 years." He continues:
I was a youngster employed in the office of a new illustrated evening paper. It was a sensation. Pictures of events of the day were printed at least two days after they happen. Nowadays, the illustrated papers print news sometimes a day before they occur.
Frohman continues, speaking about the establishment of numerous New York City theaters and the importance of a newsreel theater. "I hope, ladies and gentlemen, you have been able to hear me and also to see me."
He died at 83 on Dec. 26, 1940, after contracting bronchial pneumonia following breaking his right hip in a fall in a hotel suite.
103-year-old Galusha Cole
The fifth clip features 103-year-old Galusha Cole of Pasadena, California, answering questions about his life and cutting a pyramid-shaped birthday cake. A crew filmed the occasion on Aug. 19, 1929.
The man asking questions — whom the Moving Image Research Collections website identified as 73-year-old C.R. Hodges — asks Cole, "What kind of a world would you have if you could have it the way you want it?" Cole answers, "I would have people honest with each other and do away with bad habits, if they have any." Speaking of bad habits, Cole says he never drank alcohol, nor did he smoke.
Cole, born in 1826, died at age 104 on April 11, 1931, following pneumonia brought on following a fractured left hip.
A U.S. senator for a day
The only video of the eight clips that the Moving Image Research Collections shared on YouTube features Rebecca Felton — the first female U.S. senator — sitting on the front steps of her plantation home in Georgia. Felton served in the Senate for only 22 hours to fill a brief vacancy, following an appointment by the governor.
In the clip, Felton greets viewers and recounts her time in Washington, D.C. She then says, "The airplane goes over this, oh, my house, going on its way and it's got to be such a common thing, the old girl don't go even out to see if she can look at it."
New Georgia Encyclopedia described Felton as "one of the South's leading advocates for women's rights and also one of its most outspoken proponents of lynching." She died on Jan. 26, 1930, at the age of 94 after contracting a cold in Atlanta and developing bronchial pneumonia. (A second video without sound shows Felton in 1927.)
Tammany's John R. Voorhis
On July 24, 1929, a crew filmed 99-year-old John R. Voorhis speaking about his long life in New York City. The crew captured the Tammany Hall leader — born July 27, 1829 — three days shy of his 100th birthday. Speaking about his early years, he says:
New York City has very materially changed in its appearance from those days. Then, it was filled with buildings of a character much lower in height than at present. Now, it is with buildings of massive height and 15 to 20 stories, filled, occupied with people who are transacting all sorts of business and seemingly are successful in their undertakings.
Voorhis, whom a newspaper called "Grand Sachem of the powerful Tammany Society," died Feb. 5, 1932, at age 102. Upon turning 102, he had told reporters, "I said the last one would be the last. I have had too many birthdays."
Train engineer John M. Reilly
The eighth and final clip opens with a train arriving at a White Plains, New York, station on Nov. 30, 1929. The film crew interviews a 70-year-old retiring engineer named John M. Reilly.
Passengers greet Reilly, who then says to the camera he was born on Nov. 16, 1859, in Valley Falls, Rhode Island. He announces his last run as an engineer, with the video ending showing a train roaring away.
The Find a Grave website identifies a man named John Reilly, with the same birth year and town, as dying in 1937.