Trends in Ages of Death in Cornwood Parish, Devon

In a previous post I mused on how old, on average, people were when they died in Cornwood Parish, Devon, in particular those members of my own family. Devon is where my paternal line came from, or at least lived for over 300 years. Cornwood is a rural area in southwest Devon – no big towns, no industry. It has always been a relatively quiet place, with most people occupied on the land. In recent, post WWII years it has become somewhat of a bedroom community with residents commuting to Plymouth to work. Notwithstanding all that, the population has not changed much since the early 1800s.

The main cemetery is located at St. Michael and All Angels church and here people of many denominations were buried. Whether the age at death trends are similar to other areas I don’t know yet. I will probably do a similar summary of adjacent parishes, some more urban in character, to see.

Figure 1 shows the total burials in the parish since 1811. Ages at death were rarely recorded prior to them so no trend can be seen. Burials more than doubled during the first few decades likely as a result of growth in population. Baptisms also grew over four-fold from the early 1700s before peaking out about 1820. From around 1850 both baptisms and burials declined, at least as far as the church records go. That may be partly due to people moving away from the church in their daily lives. We do know that, as of 1837, birth, marriage and death records had to be recorded in civil records so parish church registers lost some of their usefulness except for active parishioners. We also know that the population of the parish did not diminish into the 20^th century. But that’s another story. What I think we can deduce is that the general statistics and ratios in the church burial records represent those of the overall community.

 

The two things we might have expected are that death among children would have declined and the average age at death might have climbed over the last two hundred years. The graphs do not disappoint in that regard.

 

What did surprise me, although I should have realized this before since I have worked with the parish BMDs for so long, is that over 50% of the deaths in the decade 1821-1830 were children under the age of eleven, most under five years old. Even 30% by 1841-1850 seems high but unchecked diseases such as measles, typhus or tuberculosis, took their toll in those years, especially on the young. Similar trends exist for older age groups: the ratio for those 11 to 20 dropped from 10% in 1851-1860 to less than 1% in 1981-1990; for those 21 to 30, it drops from 14% to near zero; for those 31 to 40, from 10% also to less than 1%.

Judging by the trends shown for other age groups, there is no doubt that people lived considerably longer in the later decades. By 1981-1990, 35% of burials were of people who had reached their 80s. Another 5% were 90 or over, an age rarely seen in the early 19^th century. The main working class ages, 41 to 60, stayed about the same across the years but the proportions of people aged 61 to 80 buried in the 1980s more than doubled between 1830 and 1990, as might be expected.

The decade of 1911-1920 saw a jump in the number of deaths of people from infant age to the early twenties. A number of young adults died in 1918, many of them women, so the spike might partly represent deaths from the Spanish Flu pandemic. Certainly some of the burials might also have been of servicemen who died during WWI. Most of the children died in 1911, although not all in a short time period, so that may rule out an epidemic. The sample is just too small to really know what was going on but it’s worth looking at further.

One can read a lot of things into trends of births and deaths. Analyses like this are worth doing for family historians as it may give them another perspective of life in the communities in which their ancestors lived. In Cornwood, we can say that the burial numbers reflect a growing improvement in the health of residents with small peaks generally representative of epidemics which occasionally attacked the community. Such events were rare after the discovery of vaccinations and improvements in water and waste treatment.

It was in interesting little exercise. Most of my ancestors fit right in with the averages which is why I wanted to look at the numbers to start with. Next I will review some nearby parishes that contain more urban settings, to see if similar trends exist.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is the Editor of Relatively Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

Perils of Using Family Trees in Old (or any) Publications

I have encountered family trees published in various documents over the years. Initially I relied on these histories to flesh out my own tree. As I did more research myself and dug into actual records, though, I began to realize many of these stories often had the wrong people in the wrong places. That was especially true for people who were not directly part of the ancestral line of the authors.

For example, there are three family summaries published and available, online as it turns out, for the Bullock/Bulloch family who emigrated from Scotland to Canada with later lines moving to various parts of the United States.

Two Anderson siblings, James (1822-1892), a 2^nd great-granduncle of mine, and Janet (1827-1892), my 2^nd great-grandaunt, married Bullock siblings, both marriages taking place in Lanark County, Ontario. Their father, Gilbert Anderson, had brought his family to Canada in 1832. I wrote about him in a post on 15 October 2013 and about his wife, Margaret Maitland on 22 Oct 2013.

I suspect that errors creep into the family histories as a result of undocumented stories passed down verbally through the generations. Descendants don’t always have the inclination to check out information written in the books they have been given, particularly, as I said, for people to whom they are not directly related. The mistakes, unfortunately, get attached to other family trees as more family historians copy the data, but also do not go to the trouble of checking and verifying it.

There are three publications available – that I know of – that described the history of the Bullock or Bullock family and, incidentally the Anderson family: 

·         Genealogy of the Bulloch, Anderson, Coleman and Knobbs Families (1910) by Hellen Knobbs Bulloch;

·         History of Hancock County, Illinois (1880) by Thomas Gregg; and

·         A Genealogy of James Bullock and Mary Hill, Latter Day Saint Pioneers by Kenneth C. Bullock, 1964.

The main problem in all of the publications is that there are no citations indicating where information was sourced.

Genealogy of the Bulloch, Anderson, Coleman and Knobbs Families – In this book, the author indicated the parents of Gilbert Anderson, my 3^rd great grandfather, were John Anderson and Margaret Wilson, Gilbert’s birth year as 1794 and his birth place as Glasgow (Scotland). His death was reported by the author as 18 July 1872 (according to Ontario records it was actually 22 July 1871). I accepted the family names for a while as have many other researchers. They appear in many published family trees. The problem was that I could not find any birth, marriage or death information in Scottish records that would confirm the relationship. The write-up lists six siblings of Gilbert so that should have been helpful in finding the family. After an exhaustive search of Scottish records on ScotlandsPeople I finally found his birth entry which showed his parents as James Anderson and Janet Finlay, his baptism date as 12 October 1792 and birth place as Campsie, Stirlingshire, Scotland. Gilbert was baptized as Gabriel but his actual birth date was not recorded in the church register. From that information I did find the other five children as well, all records having the same parents’ names. So the author had the children’s names mostly right – there was one child missing from her list – but the parents wrong. Because the information had come from so far back (late 1700s) and the parents had never left Scotland, the truth had been lost in the stories that were handed down.

History of Hancock County – The write-up on John Bullock, now with a ‘k’ in his name, says he married Jennet (Janet) Anderson in 1834 but gives no details of her family. The account also says he was born in Western Canada although it should actually have said Canada West, which was later to become the province of Ontario. The marriage was actually in 1844 as Jennet or Janet would only have been seven years old in 1834.

A Genealogy of James Bullock and Mary Hill – There is a write-up for Janet Bullock, who married James Anderson in 1848. It notes he was born “abt. 1826, of Lanark, Ontario, Canada” and was the son of Gilbert Anderson and Margaret Maitland. The parents’ names are right but he would have been born in Scotland since the family did not arrive in Canada until 1832. While there was a Lanark County, there was not a Canada or a province of Ontario until 1867.

In the same book the write-up for John Bullock indicates he married Janet Anderson who was born “15 May 1827, Kirkintillock, Dumbartonshire, Scotland [sic]” and was the daughter of Gilbert and Margaret. One problem is that no birth/baptism records can be found for Janet in Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire, or for two of her brothers, John (b. 1829) and Robert (b. 1832). While the family may well have been there from 1827 to 1832, I have not found any register of the births anywhere. One daughter was born in Kirkintilloch in 1826; we have that record. We know they arrived in Canada in 1832 from a number of sources (US censuses, obituaries, death records, etc.). John Bullock was shown to have been born in Campsie, Stirlingshire, Scotland. The Anderson family lived in the Campsie area as well where their first two children were born suggesting the families may have been acquainted before they came to Canada, although it was reported the Bullocks emigrated in 1819. Janet’s birth date must come from family lore. It is recorded on her grave stone and may be in a family bible but I have not yet seen any formal document confirming the date.

Books like these can be useful as they may point a family historian in the right direction initially but they can also be very misleading as they very often do not have references or citations that will allow a reader to check dates, places and names. The summaries often come down through the generations verbally as well and mistakes can certainly be made in final transpositions of the stories.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is the Editor of Relatively Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

An Essay on Turning 70

I reached a milestone birthday on the weekend by turning 70. Although not life-altering by any means, it was, to me at least, a significant event.

Many people reading this will already have passed this threshold and no longer be all that impressed. But those of us who get this far still only reach the day once. I have two sisters who went passed the age some time back. Our parents never made it, so for us it is a bit more eventful.

I have to say this one snuck up on me. It seems like it was only a short time ago that my wife and I were in our thirties, busy renovating a home, raising a family, attending kids’ hockey games and parent-teacher meetings, and generally doing all the things younger people do and enjoy. Now I have grandchildren the same ages as our children were those many decades ago and their parents doing what we did.

There is a very old saying, the origins of which apparently lost in history: Time and tide wait for no man. A similar phrase appeared in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – The Clerk’s Tale – in 1478: Ay fleeth the tyme; it nyl no man abyde (Ever flees the time; it will wait for no man). In that passage it had to do with a man considering marriage, though, not turning 70! Seventy, for goodness sake!

Time does seem to go exceedingly faster these days. As I said, this particular birthday seemed to come on very quickly. Did we not just celebrate my 60^th? And 50^th? And what about that big party we had for my 40^th? For this birthday we had a quiet dinner out: just my wife, two of my sisters, a brother-in-law and my daughter who flew in especially for the occasion – and me, of course. Our dogs helped marked the day by not getting me up at five in the morning for their first constitutional walk; they waited until 5:30!

Being 70 offers a different perspective on life. We are certainly slower of foot, stiffer of joint and less patient with things like shovelling snow or mowing grass. We are no longer saving for retirement. We are there! Although I am busy every day, doing such activities as this – writing a blog post – I am no longer employed (or “employable” as I like to joke). These days I am engaged mostly in genealogical pursuits: ancestral research, writing, editing and assisting others. Older people like to have hobbies to keep busy. This more than qualifies.

Travel just got a little more complicated as insurance companies will now want to be more assured about my health than they would have demanded last week. Apparently they are more concerned, in just one day, that I am not going to collapse on a trip outside the country and they will have to cough up for medical expenses. (Isn’t it funny that they are the ones who now want more insurance?) I am quite confident that none of my ancestors ever had to think about this aspect when they picked up and moved from England, Scotland and Germany to faraway places in North America .

It has struck me that birthdays themselves are a big part of family history. We look for specific dates on which our ancestors came into the world and, of course, those dates as well, when they departed. We often consider, and compare the ages that people reached in the past, perhaps in some morbid fashion wondering how close we might be to the end ourselves. Yes, I have gone back into my files recently to see how many of my direct ancestors made it this far. The news is good; a large number of them lived well into their 80s. Maybe I’ll analyze that in another blog post.

I am happy to have made it this far. I will celebrate it, not just for myself, but also for those family members who did not achieve this age but who would have been pleased that I did: my mother, my father, my little brother, all of whom I have written about here before (Mother’s Day, My Mother’s Scrapbook, A Special 100^th Birthday, My Parents’ Wedding, My Brother Jimmy). And I will particularly hope that my descendants all enjoy at least 70 years of life – in good health and with as happy experiences behind them as I have had.

 

Wayne, 65 years ago!

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is the Editor of Relatively Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated