Your effective gear needs to take into account chainring teeth, sprocket teeth, wheel diameter and, theoretically, crank length — although bicyclists usually use a fairly standard crank length.
The wheel diameter can be ignored only if you are certain that everyone is talking about the same diameter wheels. When 700c was universal, this was OK. Now that 29 inch, 26 inch and 650b wheel sizes are also common it has become more important.
The calculation is
Chain ring teeth, divided by sprocket teeth, multiplied by wheel diameter in inches.
That gives you a gear size in "inches" which is the theoretical equivalent size of the front wheel if you were riding an "ordinary bike" which is what they used to call penny farthings. Ordinaries had direct drive with no gearing, and the gear inches idea was to enable people to compare the later "safety bicycles' (the earliest bikes we would recognise as "bikes") with ordinaries.
So, 50/19 x 28 would produce a gear of 73.7 inches. (A 700c road tyre is roughly 28 inches diameter.)
For comparison, I ride 49/20 or 49/18 giving me choices of 68.6 or 76.2 inches. I'm 55 and not as fit as I was and I can ride either of these comfortably on rolling country lanes and up all of our local hills, such as they are. Your gear sounds "not unreasonable".
