Saturday Night (delayed) Genealogy Fun: Male Ancestors' Ages at Death

A week ago, Randy Seaver asked everyone to work out the lifespans of their male ancestors for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, which was a natural follow-up to the one from the week before that, when he asked people to figure out the lifespans of their female ancestors.  I was out of town when the quest for male ancestors took place and did not have access to my family tree database, but I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise, so I'm coming in really late with it.

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible music, please!):

1) Review your pedigree chart (either on paper or in your genealogy management software program) and determine the age at death of your male ancestors back at least five generations (and more if you want to).

2)  Tell us the lifespan in years for each of these ancestors.  Which of your male ancestors in this group lived the longest?  Which lived the shortest?  

3)  Share your results in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.

These are my male ancestors for whom I have at least approximate birth and death years in my family tree program:

Father:
• Bertram Lynn Sellers, Jr., 1935– (still alive!), 80 years and counting

Grandfathers:
• Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr., 1903–1995, 91 years
• Abraham Meckler, 1912–1989, 77 years

Great-grandfathers:
• Joe Gordon, about 1892–1955, about 63 years
• Thomas Kirkland Gauntt, 1870–1951, 80 years
• Moishe Meckler, about 1882–1953, about 71 years

 Great-great-grandfathers
• Joel Armstrong, 1849–about 1921, about 72 years
• Mendel Hertz Brainin, about 1861–1930, about 69 years
• Frederick Cleworth Dunstan, 1840–1873, 33 years
• James Gauntt, about 1831–1889, about 57 years
• Victor Gordon, about 1866–1925, about 59 years
• Gershon Itzhak Nowicki, about 1858–1948, about 90 years

3x-great-grandfathers:
• Franklin Armstrong, about 1825–after 1869, about 45 years
• Richard Dunstan, about 1813–after 1860, about 47 years
• Hananiah Selah Gaunt, 1795–1852, 57 years
• Abel A. Lippincott, 1825–after 1884, about 60 years
• Ruven Yelsky, about 1838–about 1898, about 60 years

4x-great-grandfathers:
• Joel Armstrong, about 1798–1854, about 56 years
• Hananiah Gaunt, 1762–about 1799, about 37 years

5x-great-grandfathers:
• Joseph Gaunt, 1740–1806, 66 years
• Moses Mulliner, 1741–1821, 81 years

That's everyone I have entered in my database.  As with the female ancestors, I have more names and dates for the Gauntt lines (and maybe some for the Dunstans), but they are not in the database yet.  But I apparently have more of my forefathers entered than I do foremothers, or at least I know more dates for them.

The longest lived I know about in those seven generations was my paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr., partner of Anna (Gauntt) Stradling, who lived to be 91 years old (two and a half months shy of 92).  The shortest life was my great-great-grandfather Thomas Cleworth Dunstan, husband of Martha (Winn) Dunstan, who lived to be only 33 years old.

The average age for these 21 men (about two thirds of Randy's total) is a little more than 70 years.  (Again, I used to have more, until I proved that Elmer was my grandfather's adoptive father.)  The averages for each generation are:
• Father:  80 years
• Grandfathers:  84 years
• Great-grandfathers:  71 years
• Great-great-grandfathers: 63 years
• 3x-great-grandfathers:  54 years
• 4x-great-grandfathers:  47 years
• 5x-great-grandfathers:  74 years