1 This section combines new materials with those presented in Growing Old in America (exp. ed., New York, 1978), 26-77. For subsequent scholarship which has replicated results as to age heaping, life expectancy, the language of age relations, church seating, office holding, retirement, and property holding, see Heather Green Campbell, “A Study of Old Age in Early America, 1607-1820” (thesis, Univ. of Houston, 1986).

2 Cotton Mather, A Good Old Age (Boston, 1726), 4; Increase Mather, Two Discourses Shewing, I, That the Lord’s Ears Are Open to the Prayers of the Righteous, and II, The Dignity and Duty of Aged Servants of the Lord (Boston, 1716), 52.