Sullivans in my own family have been noted for longevity. Evidently this trait is not universal; Master John Sullivan, the eighteenth century New Hampshire schoolmaster who fathered a Revolutionary War general and a governor, once noted that though he himself had lived too long, the rest of his branch of the Sullivan family had long been known for their short life span, few of them surviving much beyond the age of fifty. Curious as to whether this might be a Sullivan trait, I once examined a sample of seventy prominent nineteenth century American Sullivans, comparing their longevity with a comparable sample of Smiths. The distribution of age at death is shown in the graphs.
Evidently Sullivans two generations ago had a mean natural life span of 70 years (sigma=12) slightly exceeding the 67 year mean of their Anglo-AMerican counterparts.