Life's Pages

        The books of life were closed for many, many, and many; all at the same time, during the black death. Those remaining tore out most of the pages of their own books while asking how could such a thing happen? Those writing just after the piles of bodies were buried dwells on the effect of the character of those survivors.  "Callous, reckless, superstitious, heartless. cruel, and licentious" as recorded in The Historians' History of The World, Vol. 18, p. 469. My own Y-chromosome seemed to have survived this valley of death to remain connected at Llwyn-Onn for many generations to come. The following scan shows the reference for these branches that continue on down my Jones surname family tree.

Scan is from Nicholas Vol. I, p. 355 [see post April 9, 2023]. For Black Death see post February 21, 2024. For a discussion of my research notebooks see post April 14, 2023. For a discussion of Llwyn-Onn see post of August 28, 2023. Much more to be written about these life's pages.

By The Numbers

        For many years climbing out the branches of my ancestor's family trees, one of my basic concepts was that an "average" lifespan for each generation followed an accepted path. The further back in time you went, the shorter duration of existence. When my own grandmother reached the age of 65, she was already set to go to the great beyond. [This was the 1950s!] By my medical school days [ the 1970s] this had reached the age of around 73 years. However, going back in time, length of life would decline in the opposite direction. So, getting the family tree all the way back to around 850 A.D. [Gadforch (JA-1)] it seemed reasonable that most folks lived to around 30 years of age.

       Now, it was somewhat surprising that the folks who started to write their own accounts of the day [Hywel Dda and the guys starting around 850 A.D.] gave their life span at 60 years. What was this all about was my thinking.  Let's see now. How to check this context?

       Well, the text by Mike Ashley, British Kings & Queens, (see post 20 February 2023) gave a window to around this time. The following table is the result of trying to look through the ages.

       The first column lists the individuals named who could be found to have a length of life recorded. The page of each person is given from the text by Ashley where the dates are recorded. The second column shows the years listed for each individual. There were eleven folks (n=11) for a total of 587 years [third column]. The average age for all the folks listed was 53 years! Column four shows calculations for the variance and standard deviation with the standard deviation being 38 years.

        What about that! Sixty years was a good fit. It shows you what I knew about these years long, long ago. But hey, by the numbers, 60 years seems a good number.

One More Time

      The following drawing continues down the yellow brick road starting with the post of June 3rd. It connects the road from Ninnian (JG-1) to Jeuaf (JH-1), as the direct male line of my Jones surname ancestors continue on down the family tree. Iorwerth Fychan (JI-1) is identified as being the 1st of Llwyn-Onn beginning during the reign of Henry II [1155 A.D.- 1189 A.D.]. This geographic location would have most likely been considered a "Townland" (see last two posts) and continues past the Black Death period of the 1350s. Edward (JN-1) seems to have made it through the dark clouds of his day to continue the story of my Jones surname ancestors. The dates range from around 1100 A.D. to 1400 A.D.

       Many more branches to be climbed.