Age and Cause of Death

One of the reasons for doing genealogical research is to build a picture of health tendencies. One of the problems with our situation is that times have changed in profound ways since our grandparents generation and even our parents generation. By we, I mean the baby boomers with the name Dixon or  Wellons or a maiden name of Wellons.

Our grandparents, and even our parents for the first 30 years of adult life, grew up in an age of smoking. Even if they quit at a younger age, or never smoked, they lived with folks who did and people smoked literally everywhere. Doctors offices, restaurants, stores...you name it. The effects of smoking and the tendency to eat many fried foods...I mean the Crisco kind of frying, was drastic. Not that we eating totally healthy in the boomer generation. Many of our elders were overweight in their older years. Maybe half. I’m the only overweight person in my generation.

On the good side, most of our elders benefitted from the wonders of modern medicine. Antibiotics. Surgery. Vaccines (even if a little late). Of course, we have treatments now for almost everything. We can at least slow down even the meanest diseases.

Here’s a breakdown for the 18 members of our grandparents generation.

Age at Death

1- infant
3- aged 40-60
6- aged 60-80
7- aged 80-100
1- age 103

Cause of Death

1- infant (maybe colic related?)
6- heart related (MI, CHF, Coronary Artery Disease)
2- COPD; lung but not lung cancer
5- cancer (2 lung, 1 larynx, 1colon, 1leukemia)
1- stroke
2- unknown (Hugh in California; Charles in Missouri)
1- old age (literally... Aunt Jessie fell out of bed at 103 and broke her hip)

You can see the effects of smoking. But, except for my grandmother Bess and Uncle Edward (maybe smoking and fire inhalation from being a fireman), and Charles Beltred (cause unknown), they seemed to live a good long life.