Life expectancy

[markem]

No, it isn't another "how are cigars bad for you" thread

I know that there are several people, perhaps more, who have looked in to their family trees. My BIL has worked his side of the family back to about 1000 AD and our side back to about 1400 AD.

Recently, I've seen several places note that today the average life span is about 25 years more than in the middle ages. Nice, but it is an average and includes the very high infant mortality rate (IMO, the real reason people were encouraged to have large families). Recently, I read an article from a genealogist where it was asserted that if you remove the infant mortality rate from both groups, then the life spans were about equal with the middle ages jumping up to within 5 years of the current value.

Has anyone looked at this part of their family tree? My BIL has the family tree in a database and a quick check seems to bear out the article's information, at least for our two families. It would be nice to know if others are seeing the same thing.

[shilala]

Nobody has done our family tree that extensively, but I watch population numbers and life expectancy.
Females in the US are having 1.89 babies, less than replacement rate for couples but life expectancy has risen to around 78-79 years.
The only reason I even mention it is because the numbers bang out to nearly a perfect zero increase in population for the US, were it not for immigration.
That's cool.

My family life expectancy is around 83 years, take away accidents and getting killed in wars. Really good teeth, no heart disease, and it pretty much takes a bullet to get rid of us.

[Ashcan Bill]

I have parts of our family going back to the 1600s and continue to research other branches. Another boon to being retired and having time to do things like this.

I've noted a couple of things looking at the life spans of my ancestors. First, recent generations show a marked increase in their life spans simply due to advances in modern medicine. For the most part we don't die from high blood pressure anymore, nor infections, treatable heart disease, and on and on. Many in my family tree passed from things that are preventable today.

Second, our world today is a much safer place. Accidents were common and often fatal in the older days. A few deaths in my family included being burned to death, torn up in a thresher machine, kicked by a horse, and a wagon accident. Farm life could be pretty deadly once upon a time. And industrial occupations of the past were equally fraught with risk. It was quite common years back for people working in industry to be missing fingers. Machines back then didn't have the safety features of today. Belts, gears, pulleys and chains were all open and just waiting to pull you in.

Looking back over my records, most of my ancestors tended to die in their sixties or early seventies. Today that would be considered an early death, and most folk in our family live at least 15 years longer.

It's not that our ancestors couldn't have lived longer - they just didn't have an environment conducive to longer life.

[mosesbotbol]

My family tree is very clear back to mid 19th century.

So many factors can make one's life short beyond what the Lord intended for humans to live.

[8zeros]

Interesting. My redskin tree goes back to the 1700s but there are no ages of death on it. Probably can be researched. My paleface ancestry disappears a bunch of different places in Europe and again I never saw ages of death on any of it. I'll have to ask my father, he's the one who did the tree. A new challenge for him.

[shilala]

How do you guys search this stuff?
I'd like to hunt back a few generations. Maybe to around 1850 or so.

[Ashcan Bill]

Originally Posted by shilala

How do you guys search this stuff?
I'd like to hunt back a few generations. Maybe to around 1850 or so.

I started years ago, talking to all my living relatives and recording as much data as I could. Names, dates, places, relationships, stories.

Then I started researching data on microfiche at the National Archives. Census, birth, death, immigration records. That was long, tedious work before the miracle of the internet.

Today you can sign up on a couple of sites and not only research the same data online, but probably hook into trees that other distant family members have already put together.

Start with a decent genealogy program, fill in what you can, and then start looking at census records. That should keep you busy for a year or two.

[shilala]

That sounds like a total blast, Bill.
Thanks for the info, I really do appreciate it and I'm going to follow up as soon as I can get some time.
What websites, in particular?

[AdamJoshua]

Scott my brother has used ancestry.com and found a lot of immigration records and census records for our grandparents, not so much on the family history before coming over from Romania and other parts of Europe, but it's as good as any place to start.

Best of luck!

[shark]

I've traced my Mother's Mother's lineage back to 18th century Pennsylvania via ancestry dot com, and this was verified by family records. Going beyond that is sketchy, though. I find some ancestors from Holland, Ireland, Scotland, England but with no hard evidence I can't be too sure. Tracing my Dad's side of the family back, I hit a brick wall with his grandfather. Nobody in the family has any info at all as to who his parents were.

[shark]

Originally Posted by Ashcan Bill

I have parts of our family going back to the 1600s and continue to research other branches. Another boon to being retired and having time to do things like this.

I've noted a couple of things looking at the life spans of my ancestors. First, recent generations show a marked increase in their life spans simply due to advances in modern medicine. For the most part we don't die from high blood pressure anymore, nor infections, treatable heart disease, and on and on. Many in my family tree passed from things that are preventable today.

Second, our world today is a much safer place. Accidents were common and often fatal in the older days. A few deaths in my family included being burned to death, torn up in a thresher machine, kicked by a horse, and a wagon accident. Farm life could be pretty deadly once upon a time. And industrial occupations of the past were equally fraught with risk. It was quite common years back for people working in industry to be missing fingers. Machines back then didn't have the safety features of today. Belts, gears, pulleys and chains were all open and just waiting to pull you in.

Looking back over my records, most of my ancestors tended to die in their sixties or early seventies. Today that would be considered an early death, and most folk in our family live at least 15 years longer.

It's not that our ancestors couldn't have lived longer - they just didn't have an environment conducive to longer life.

And then again, my great grandfather from my dad's side (born in 1854) lived to be close to 100. Longevity is the norm on his side of the family. My mom's not so much. A lot of heart problems, cancers, and one disturbing hereditary disease: Huntington's Disease, which is a hellish neurological disorder. I tend to think since mom's family grew up in a coal mining town and many of them worked the mines, that could be a link to the cancer.

[jsnake]

My Mother's side was well done back into the 1800's and put into a huge binder that I received when she passed away. Very interesting. It even has some of those creepy 1800's family pictures that just haunt you. Pretty interesting seeing all the way back to my great, great, great, great, great grandparents. I would like to get into my father's side and see how far back I can go.

[Ashcan Bill]

Originally Posted by shilala

That sounds like a total blast, Bill.
Thanks for the info, I really do appreciate it and I'm going to follow up as soon as I can get some time.
What websites, in particular?

Ancestry.com is one of the more popular pay sites.

Another good one is familysearch.org run by the Latter-day Saints and it's free. All you have to do is sign up.

Many states also run their own web sites with census data, property records, divorce records, military records, birth, death and marriage records, etc.

Then there are immigration records complete with ship passenger lists. Not to mention naturalization records. And we can't forget church records of births, baptisms, confirmations and deaths.

There's a lot of stuff out there. The internet has made things so much easier than it used to be. You can spend many hours researching from the comfort of your chair. And more data becomes available all the time.

Feel free to hit me up with any questions.

[8zeros]

I've been spending a little (too much) time on this new curiosity and have been keeping a mental running average of the ages at death I've been seeing going back to the early 1800s. A lot is missing but the average of the dates I've been seeing is about 72-75. A lot made it into their 80s. I think the missing dates would pull that average down a bunch.