Life Expectancy in the 19th Century

Using the new life tables created by J. David Hacker, I put together these charts in order to compare the life expectancy of people in the cemetery with the overall life expectancy of the white population of the United States. I excluded the decades before 1830 because there wasn't enough data available from the cemetery. Here are my results for male life expectancy at birth and female life expectancy at birth.

As you can see, all four sets of lines share the same general trend: a dip in the middle, followed by gradually increasing life expectancy over time. The lines in each chart also have the same relationship to one another. That is to say, in both of these charts, the cemetery has lower life expectancy than the new life tables in the earlier decades but reverses later on, so that the cemetery has higher life expectancy than the new life tables.

Now compare this with male and female life expectancy at the age of 20. Again, the same general trend is visible: a dip in the middle of the century, with steadily increasing life expectancy from the 1870s on. The cemetery also shows lower life expectancy than the new life tables at the beginning, but overtakes the new life tables towards the end. Notably, it is much later in the century that the cemetery begins to show greater life expectancy - in the 1870s for men and not until the 1890s for women, whereas in the tables for life expectancy at birth, the trend had already reversed by 1870.

Also notable is the fact that the 1860s seem to have been a bad time for everyone, but especially men and especially men buried in the cemetery.

 
It would seem that for much of the nineteenth century, people at the cemetery died younger than average. Then, in the 1870s, as general life expectancy increased, the life expectancy of people in the cemetery increased even more, overtaking the national average. For both the cemetery and the national population, 1870 seems to have been a turning point, after which longevity greatly increased, and continued to increase.

I don't know how to explain why the people in the cemetery seem to have shorter lifespans than average. Was this an accurate reflection of the longevity of the congregation, or of the local population? Are the numbers skewed by the relatively small sample size, or by my methods of data collection? How might they compare to other cemeteries in the area?

Much more research is needed!

Source
Hacker, J. David. "Decennial Life Tables for the White Population of the United States, 1790-1900." Historical Methods Vol. 43, No. 2 (April 2010): 45-79.