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I was looking at a chart of the average life expectancy, and sure with averages there is always varibels, for people born in the early 1900s according to this chart it was around the 50s. It seems that most of the people in my family born in the early 1900s and even in the 1850s-1880s lived to be in their 70s-80s-and 90s. So am I part of some super race of humans, are my ancestors some kind of immortals, or are we just that awesome.
I feel like it's that way with a lot of ancestors in my tree too. I always though people died really young back in the day. The youngest I've found in my tree was a baby and a great great great grandpa who died of TB in a pow camp during the civil war at 36. Everyone else seems to live to 70-80+. Not super surprised though since all of my grandparents lived to be about 80 with one going on 89 this year.
It seems like a lot of people that I know, or have talked to lost their grand parents when they were very young. My great grand parents didn't start going until I was in high school
You have to remember where the numbers come from, as well. Many people never made it past the age of two, which brings the average life expectancy far down. Additionally, giving birth is still risky, but especially was back then. A lot of women died in childbirth or from complications of childbirth. That will bring the average age of life expectancy down as well. Also, the people in your family you're likely to know about (your Grandpa his Grandpa, etc.) are people who made it to an age where they procreated - they probably knew many children who died, but those dead children won't necessarily be people you heard about, since they died so young and never accomplished anything or had their own children to pass on their story. My Grandma lived until she was 92 and her older sister died at 97, but their brothers all died by the time they were four, except for one who lived until his 20's. My Grandma was born in 1917.
Here's a website with a graph of average US life expectancy from 1850 to 2000. You can see that from age 20 and on, the expectancy isn't that different. If a person made it to 40 or 60, their life expectancy ended up being almost the same as it was in 2000.
I'm finding the majority of my ancestors lived into their 70s and 80s, but a handful of women died younger--a couple in their late 40s or early 50s, and a couple in their younger years, from complications of childbirth ("childbed fever"). Then we had one man, a great-grandfather, who drank himself to death when pretty young, at 50.
Those few people might drag down my average, but if they are left out, the majority of my ancestors seem to be off the charts with regard to life expectancy in the eras in which they lived.
Edit: Oh, right! I didn't even think about all those babies who died before the age of 2. I'm sure they go into the average and bring it down too. Even with all my octogenarians, a bunch of dying infants would pull the average way down.
If you made it to 20 you were likely to make it to 60+ (childbirth deaths aside). It's the high childhood mortality that brings the numbers down. If you survived those very scary childhood year you life expectancy was good
You have to remember where the numbers come from, as well. Many people never made it past the age of two, which brings the average life expectancy far down. Additionally, giving birth is still risky, but especially was back then. A lot of women died in childbirth or from complications of childbirth. That will bring the average age of life expectancy down as well. Also, the people in your family you're likely to know about (your Grandpa his Grandpa, etc.) are people who made it to an age where they procreated - they probably knew many children who died, but those dead children won't necessarily be people you heard about, since they died so young and never accomplished anything or had their own children to pass on their story. My Grandma lived until she was 92 and her older sister died at 97, but their brothers all died by the time they were four, except for one who lived until his 20's. My Grandma was born in 1917.
Here's a website with a graph of average US life expectancy from 1850 to 2000. You can see that from age 20 and on, the expectancy isn't that different. If a person made it to 40 or 60, their life expectancy ended up being almost the same as it was in 2000.
+1. So many people misunderstand average life expectancies and don't realize that just because the average life expectancy was 50, it doesn't mean it was unusual for many people to live to be 70+. I always do an average life expectancy of my OWN tree by using FTM's reports to create a spreadsheet where I can then average the ages at death with a click of the button. Of my ancestors alone whose birth/death dates are known, the average life expectancy in my tree is about 70. That's because it's not including infant and child deaths. One of my ancestors actually lived to be over 100 and this was in colonial times.
My family shows much the same pattern. The ones I had full dates for were usually adults, but the women usually made it into the seventies unless they died during the childbirthing years. then you see a lot of notations for children with only a birth date, and the name bounces down to the next boy or girl. One family there were three boys before one grew up with the name. It still astonishishes me that some of the grandmothers with a few greats on them had ten or eleven children and lived to the late seventies anyway.
And hardship in life doesn't seem to be a factor in the oldest living. My five x g grandfather started in East End London, got shipped in a slave hold out of the Old Bailey, was held for eleven years as a convict, and went to Kentucky after. Then back and then to Pennsulvania. But he died at 91. My great grandfather started out life being burned out as the civil war started, resettled back after as a child and married twice. But he died in 1930 just after the Census living with his son in Los Angeles. I did a comparison by writing it all out. Except for a few women, most made it to the seventies, and most of the men to the 80's back when life was much harder. And my aunt lived to a hundred. Even with Cancer, Dad made it to the eighties.
On his dad's side, my son has two g grandmothers who either made it to a hundred or just shy of it. And his grandfather is in his 80's and going strong.
I mentioned this in another thread, but there was a population survery of one of the plague mass graves done in London. What astonished them was how it curve and distribution nearly matched modern figures. Life was apparently not so short, except for black plague, as it was assimed.
Same here. Those that made it through middle age were well into their 80s and 90s when they died. One of the families was known for their longevity (the newspaper kept publishing mentions of a brother and sister, basically saying that they were still alive after all these years).
But these were people who died about 100 years ago. More recent generations -- people that I knew growing up -- many of them died in their 60s or early 70s.
My dad was born in l900 to farmers in Arkansas. My mother in l903 to farmers 80 miles away. Both lived to age 97, three years apart. My dad attributed a long life to staying physical, working hard. He also worked his brain by earning a master's degree with a 4. overall. His parents, while uneducated, valued it and encouraged their children going to college. All enjoyed long lives, at least into their late eighties.... one lived to 104.
Pretty much the same with mother and her eleven siblings, although, her dad wanted the girls to be educated, whereas, not so much the boys. He thought the boys would be able to support themselves without college. One boy, a horse trader and became wealthy. The middle boy, a truck driver and farmer and the third son, moonshiner. Most of the girls became educators and both genders lived to late eighties or nineties.
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