A puritan's life expectancy?

Question

What was a general puritan's life expectancy? Did they die early? From what main causes?

Answer 1

I'm assuming you're referring to the Puritans of Massachusetts (as opposed to the English Puritans [in which case the answer depends on whether Cromwell was in charge or Charles I was in charge]).

As the chart above notes, much older than you might think once you lived to adulthood. There's an excellent short article about it at the link below (to PlimothPlantation.org).

In some ways, 40 was actually younger to the Puritans than it is to us; 40 year old men were considered young. Most men did not have their last child until they were past that age (due to lack of birth control and large families) and many posts required that you be older than that. Living past 100 was not unheard of- at least one woman made it to 108 in 17th century New Hampshire- and people in their 70s/80s were very common. Also, the life expectancy was much higher in America than in England due to the cleaner air, lack of open sewage in the streets, people being nowhere near as crowded, more abundant food (after the initial few years), etc..
For women, of course, the major cause of death was childbirth. If that did not kill you, you had a decent shot at old age. Remember that there were no smoking related deaths at the time and people got a lot more exercise, which helped, and while uniquely American things like Indian attacks took some lives they weren't that many statistically.
Another thing that helped life expectancy was that many of the "advances" made in the 18th and 19th centuries had not yet been made. A major overestimation of how much blood was in the human body led to a HUGE upswing in 'bleeding' of patients which causes as many deaths as it prevented, and the fixation with mercury/quicksilver as a cure-all (which also killed many patients) didn't come to America until many years after it was in England.

Regarding childbirth, it largely ran in families whether or not women would be safely able to bear large families; how many surviving children a woman's mother and sisters had borne was something very much considered when choosing a wife. One member of the Phipps family (a very wealthy Puritan New England family) gave birth to 26 children [including 3 sets of twins] and died of natural causes [and probably exhaustion- her husband probably died of infection from the castration]).

Answer 2

Puritan Life

Answer 3

Here's the life expectancy in Plymouth colony in the 17th century listed by age goups and gender:

Age Men Women
21 69 62
30 70 64
40 71 69
50 74 76
60 76 77
70 80 81
80 85 87

Basically a 21 year old man would be expected to live til around 69. This chart is meant to show gender differences in life expectancy.

Here's a chart showing deaths according to age and gender in Plymouth colony:

Age Group Men(%) Women(%)
22-29 1.6 5.9
30-39 3.6 12.0
40-49 7.8 12.0
50-59 10.2 10.9
60-69 18.0 14.9
70-79 30.5 20.7
80-89 22.4 16.0
90+ 5.9 7.6

Wow I wrote a lot. My guess would be that the leading cause of deaths in women was in childbirth. Others might be illnesses or starvation? Hope this helps!

Oops I just noticed my chart attempts got messed up. They are really squished together hope you can read them!

Answer 4

Life expectancy tends to be related to ethnic groups. Japanese-American women used to have the highest of any group in the USA. They didn't smoke, drank sparingly, ate lots of rice and vegetables, very little red meat, some fish. Back when I was taking a class in the people of California, their life expectancy was 85. Whites as a group rated about 70, American Indians a dismal 50 or so, Blacks around 65. If, for instance, one of those Japanese-American women married a man named Smith or Lee or Kowalski, and didn't start wolfing down the T-bones and french fries / Dim Sum / Kielbasa, she cold still make it to 85/90 despite her surname. You have a point sort of - longevity does run in families. If all of 8 your great grandparents died of heart attacks in their 50's, you would be well advised to watch what you eat, exercise a lot and keep your stress low.

Answer 5

"The average Ancient Greek lived until age 18. The median life span of a Puritan was 33...."
Source: http://www.efmoody.com/estate/lifeexpectancy.html

"In an age of routine discomforts, rudimentary medicine without pain-killers, frequent bereavements (most families lost at least as many children as they reared), an average life expectancy of just under thirty years..."
Source: http://www.semperreformanda.com/puritans.htm

Virginia-Mass. Comparisons - "Life expectancy was apparently much longer in New England than in the Chesapeake colonies because climatic and economic conditions were more favorable there."
http://www.sagehistory.net/colonial/topics/NewEngland.htm

This article might give you the answer on main causes of death. http://www.austincc.edu/jdikes/1301readings/SRALL.pdf