Pioneer Stock

The other day my husband and I were musing about the general good health of his high school contemporaries in his home town. They are in their early 80's now and all are living independently. Except for those who smoked and succumbed to emphysema, they, for the most part, are free of deadly cancers and mental or emotional illness.

What is the reason for this exceptional hardiness, I wondered? I began to think about their families, their parents and grandparents. Most of them had lived in the area for generations and, since this northwest region had been founded only 75 years before they were born, that brought me to this conclusion: their grandparents were pioneers.

Pioneers were, and are, of an adventurous spirit. They had to be clear minded and healthy to survive the many obstacles and unknowns of "heading west". My husband's grandparents moved west from Missouri and one of his great-grandfathers moved to the west coast from England via sailing ship "around the Horn". Now that took gumption! (There's an old fashioned word for you.)

My parents and grandparents, and for generations before that, lived in and around Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. At some point, two or three hundred years before I was born, my ancestors had to sail to the "New World" from Europe, mainly England. However, it was so many generations ago that I can't even trace the lineage.

My "pioneer" ancestry has been diluted by many generations whereas my husband's is only two or three generations back. I'm convinced that this is a strong contributing factor in my husband's and his contemporaries' healthy longevity.