Mortality at the Episcopal Cemetery

After reading the article "Applying Archaeological Techniques to Conserve a Historical Cemetery in Ripley, Maine" in the Maine Archaeological Society Bulletin (thanks, Laurie!) I wanted to make my own chart to show the ages at which people in the cemetery died and track them across time. The chart above is based on the 1909 transcription and my own research drawn from the stones themselves, obituaries, censuses, etc. The chart represents 398 individuals. Twenty two individuals were excluded from the chart due to the fact that their age at death could not be determined. Also, my data for the 20th century is not as complete, so the latest burial included in the chart is from 1906.

I should note that infants for whom no age was given (some graves simply say "Infant") were automatically given the age of 0.5 years, as were any infants who were less than one year old, for the sake of the chart.

Looking at the chart, it's difficult to distinguish any sort of pattern, aside from perhaps a general drift towards greater longevity over time. It's easy to see that more people were buried in the cemetery after 1820 than before, but the age at which they died at any time seems almost random, with one exception. There is a huge cluster of child deaths in the mid-19th century, particularly between the years 1845 and 1870.

The next thing I wanted to do was to break down age at death by gender. The following charts represent 199 male burials and 198 female burials. One infant was excluded because his/her gender could not be determined. One person who was identified by initials only (C. H. Purdy) was assumed to be male.

Again, it's somewhat hard to make out a pattern. I expected that more women than men would die in their 20s and 30s due to complications of childbirth and pregnancy, but that doesn't seem to be the case. There does seem to be a small cluster of deaths of men in their 20s around the year 1860, perhaps reflecting Civil War fatalities.

Life Expectancy at the Cemetery
The most important thing to remember about average life expectancy is that it can be misleading - more so in the past than it is today. Because children died so frequently, life expectancy at birth was low throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. However, as soon as an individual made it out of childhood, his or her life expectancy increased significantly. This pattern is reflected in the average life expectancy of people buried in the cemetery.

To begin with, average life expectancy at birth for all 398 individuals included in this study was 42 years. For the 199 males, it was 40.8 years, and for the 198 females, it was 43.5 years.

Once a person reached the age of 10, average life expectancy was 53 years (54 for women and 51 for men). Once a person reached the age of 30, average life expectancy was 61 years (62 for women and 60 for men). Once a person reached the age of 60, average life expectancy was 74 (74.5 for women and 73.6 for men).

Of 398 burials, 21% were children below the age of ten, and 30% were adults over the age of 65.

Life Expectancy Over Time
By calculating and plotting average life expectancy at birth for each decade, it's easier to see the trends in mortality at the cemetery over time. The following chart shows the average life expectancy of people buried at the cemetery between the years 1773 and 1906. The numbers for the early decades (1770s, 1790s, 1800s, and 1810s) are distorted due to the fact that there were so few burials (and none in the 1780s). Beginning in the 1820s, the numbers are more likely to reflect reality.

To shed light on the important factor of child mortality, I made this graph, representing the percentage of children under 10 years who were buried in the cemetery each decade.



Again, the first few decades of this graph are distorted due to the small number of burials, but after 1820 are more accurate. It seems that child mortality was very high in the mid-nineteenth century, averaging around 1/3 of burials between 1830 and 1860, but it dropped off dramatically in 1870.

Below, you can see the numbers I used to create the charts above.

1773-1779
Two burials; average life expectancy: 62.5 years
0% under the age of 10 years
50% over the age of 65 years

1780-1789
No burials.

1790-1799
Nine burials; average life expectancy: 38 years 
33.33% under the age of 10 years

1800-1809
Two burials; average life expectancy: 24 years
0% under the age of 10 years
0% over the age of 65 years

1810-1819
Three burials; average life expectancy: 52 years
None under the age of 10 years
33.33% over the age of 65 years

1820-1829
Twenty burials; average life expectancy: 38.9 years
15% under the age of 10 years
20% over the age of 65 years

1830-1839
Thirty burials; average life expectancy: 31.4 years
33.33% under the age of 10 years
16.67% over the age of 65 years

1840-1849
Forty burials; average life expectancy: 37.9 years
32.5% under the age of 10 years
25% over the age of 65 years

1850-1859
Sixty-eight burials; average life expectancy: 33.7 years
33.8% under the age of 10 years
22% over the age of 65 years

1860-1869
Seventy-five burials; average life expectancy: 31.6 years
33.33% under the age of 10 years
18.7% over the age of 65 years

1870-1879
Sixty-one burials; average life expectancy: 50.6 years
6.6% under the age of 10 years
37.7% over the age of 65 years

1880-1889
Forty-three burials; average life expectancy: 50.8 years
14% under the age of 10 years
37.2% over the age of 65 years

1890-1899
Twenty-eight burials; average life expectancy: 65.2 years
0% under the age of 10 years
60.7% over the age of 65 years

1900-1906
Sixteen burials; average life expectancy: 66 years 
0% under the age of 10 years
56.2% over the age of 65 years

Conclusions
If I were to do a proper scientific study of mortality at the cemetery, I would want to fill in the missing data by transcribing graves erected after 1906 and by conducting research on the 22 individuals who were excluded from these charts in order to determine their ages at death. I would also try to find a way to control for the discrepancies in the number of burials each decade; obviously, the fact that burials were few to begin with and tapered off toward the end is bound to distort these sort of calculations.

There are also historical and cultural factors to consider. How did war, epidemics, immigration, industrialization, religion, familial ties, social class, ethnicity, and interpersonal issues affect who was buried at the cemetery and when? How did the lives of the two churches on the site affect the life of the cemetery?

It's possible to take a guess at the latter question. Burials were few during the years that the first church stood, due to both the low density of people in the area and the Revolution. After the war, the cemetery didn't see a significant rise in burials until the 1820s and 1830s. During this time, the congregation was growing, but the church had been damaged by the war and wasn't used. The second church was built in 1852 to accommodate the growing community, and perhaps because of its construction, the cemetery continued to see more and more burials.

My next step will be to research mortality rates in nineteenth-century New York to see how they compare to the figures I have calculated for the cemetery.