Yeah, I think this is fairly well established but I can’t cite sources. If you had an immune system that got you through childhood you had a good shot at living to an old age.
I’m also finding that the puritans were a pretty rowdy and fun loving bunch who were very interested in the sciences. My uncle has some notes taken by an ancestor at a public hearing where Cotton Mather was discussing the possibility that God might not oppose the process of Variolation against smallpox (An early form of vaccination).
From what I’m reading I’m finding that anyone who has a family going back 6 or 7 generations very likely has a fair amount of indian blood.
All you have to do is to add up the ages on old tombstones. Several members of my family have exceeded 100 years. (My mother celebrates her 100th birthday next week.) But the previous centenarians were around in the ealy 1800s.
When we buried my father in the family plot at the tender age of 56, I noticed tombsones of other famil members, going back 3 generations, who had all lived into their 80s and longer.