While working with my Mom on her book about our Swedish-side roots, I was struck by the number of people who simply up and died well before 50 years of age for one reason or another.
My immediate ancestors arrived on the passenger liner Oceania from Liverpool in 1905, traveling in steerage (third-class), a 39 year old father and his 27 year old wife with two infants, a 2-year old boy and a 6-month old girl. Great-grandfather would only live another six year before dying from pneumonia. Back in the Old Country, one young mother - a cousin - died in childbirth, father unknown. Another boy-cousin entered into his compulsory Military Service and just dispappeared - was never seen again. Maybe he didn't want to (or couldn't) go back to that little village after he had seen the bright lights.
As I looked back at earlier and earlier dates, the legibility of names decreases and the shortness of their span is more marked. The earliest name that we can trace-back, somewhere in mid 1655, is a bit of a guess.
The miraculous grand arc of Western Medicine that we so easily take for granted (and denigrate in some circles for various political reasons) was mostly achieved during my Grandfather's lifetime. We now have effective and available treatments for formerly killing and disfiguring diseases like Polio, Diphtheria, Smallpox, Yellow Fever, Typhoid Fever, Measles, Tuberculosis, Pertussis, and Pneumococcal diseases. While there is still much-much more to do in Medicine, much of it seems to be in smaller, more alien and removed increments at the DNA level - and due to other strange political winds some are diseases returning.
Looking in the old Swedish church (Lutheran) records kept in large heavy books by the Swedes. Seriously, this was your
PERMANENT RECORD including grades in spelling and math -
as an adult.
In the books the basic data (who, what, when, where, how & why) was recorded dutifully by a traveling Minister who covered various different Parishes and counties as instructed. There is name-after-name with a simple line struck through it and a number besides - the person was dead and at a certain age or date.
Given the efforts of the current administration many believe there's no real reason to expect that the great, tidal-wave of medicinal progress and research we have seen during our lifetimes will continue, but instead will wash-up on the near shoreline as foamy bit of trickling, salty spume. Hopefully they will keep records of that - how much or how little was spent.
I popped over to the indoor range for a quick function test of the old Colt with Winchester white-box 230-grain JHP's in the new-old barrel and came back 64 rounds lighter.
