Side note: what was the life expectancy in Patrick Henry’s time?
“17th-century English life expectancy was only about 35 years, largely because infant and child mortality remained high. Life expectancy was under 25 years in the early Colony of Virginia, and in seventeenth-century New England, about 40 percent died before reaching adulthood.”
Yup, if you made it to 15 or so you had a good chance of living a full life. Both my wife and my families had many well into their 70’s in the 1700’s and full graveyards of the young.