Chandler—A Study in Longevity. 59 
it includes to a very unusual extent the descendants of female 
members of the family. The four remaining families seem to 
be of fairly representative character, containing a few well 
known names, but largely composed of the hard-working aver¬ 
age citizens of our country. 
For the purpose of facilitating the comparison and union 
of the records, the successive generations are arranged in the 
accompanying table opposite seven dates separated by intervals 
of a third of a century and extending from 1600 to 1800, 
each date being approximately the mean date of birth of the 
members of the generation to which it is affixed. In the suc¬ 
cessive columns of the tabular record of each family are given 
the percentage of deaths in each period of ten years, while the 
last column gives the mean age of death in each generation. 
The last table presents the same statistics for the memjbers of 
the eight families together. Of course the term “mean age” 
has no real place in the first line of each table, since the age 
in the final column is that of the single common ancestor. And 
the corresponding age in the second line has little weight on 
the question under consideration, since in several of the fami¬ 
lies we are led to the conclusion that no mention is made of 
those of the immigrant’s children who died young. And in 
a careful examination of most early records it is difficult to 
avoid the belief that certain conditions indicate no small num¬ 
ber of brief lives which left no record, and that on this ac¬ 
count the recorded percentage of deaths in the first decade is 
very considerably too small, and that the mean age of the early 
generations is made larger than the facts would justify. 
It should also be stated that, although it was thought ad¬ 
visable to include in the tables of the greater part of the fami¬ 
lies the generation having the mean birth date 1800, yet at 
the times of writing the different histories which were exam¬ 
ined that generation was not entirely extinct, and it is evident 
that even a small number of survivors would make a very ap¬ 
preciable change in the percentage of deaths in the last two 
decades. This is especially obvious in the case of family F, the 
record of which was published twenty-three years ago, while the 
fraction yet living of the generation of 1800 must have been 
