by Marianne
Ruane
As I am now so you shall
be,
Prepare for Death &
follow me.*1
Seventeenth
century Americans were very familiar with death. One of ten children died in
its first year of life, and in the cities where people were less healthy, such
as Boston, three out of ten infants died within the first year. Of children
born in the 1600s, only sixty percent reached adulthood. Puritans believed that
even young children were blighted by original sin, and children were
continually reminded that their ultimate destination was most likely Hell,
sooner rather than later. Puritan minister Cotton Mather (of Salem witch trial
fame) was recorded saying, “Go into Burying-Place, CHILDREN; you will there see
Graves as short as your selves. Yea, you may be at Play one Hour; Dead, Dead
the next.” Even Puritan schoolbooks reminded children of looming death, “Tis
not likely that you will all live to grow up.” “T--Time cuts down all/Both great
and small.”2
The Puritan
belief in predestination – that a person’s fate was sealed before birth –
didn’t leave much room for celebration. As Puritan influence was strong in the
colonies, even outside of New England funerals were generally simple and quiet
affairs without a eulogy. After the funeral itself, however, guests would eat
and drink prodigiously, even children, at a lavish feast. The writer Nathaniel Hawthorne
was so impressed with the enjoyable reunion New Englanders found in funerals
that he wrote:
They were the only class of scenes,
so far as my investigation
has taught me, in which our ancestors were wont to
steep
their tough old hearts in wine and strong drink and indulge in
an
outbreak of grisly jollity… Look back through all the social
customs of New
England in the first century of her existence
and read all her traits of
character, and find one occasion other
than a funeral feast where jollity was
sanctioned by universal
practice… Well, old friends! Pass on with your burden
of
mortality and lay it in the tomb with jolly hearts. People should
be permitted to enjoy themselves in their own fashion; every
man to his taste—
but New England must have been a dismal
abode for the man of pleasure when the only
boon-companion
was Death.3
With the Great
Awakening religious revival in the early 1700s, religious beliefs expanded to
include the possibility of salvation. Children were now told to look forward to
death as a reunion with God and their parents, and adults were assured that a
life lived morally did make a difference. As a result, funeral services became
more elaborate and costly, with the reception feast often the most expensive
part. Accounts of 18th century Pennsylvania funerals are similar to
those in other colonies.
Evidence
suggests large funeral attendance. Gottlieb
Mittelberger wrote, “Sometimes one
can count at country
weddings and funerals 300, 400, and even 500 persons on
February 10, 1759 in the village of Emaus
in Lehigh County,
an audience of 400 was in or near the church, many hanging
Pennsylvania, 600 people attended the funeral of
Catherine
Heckedorn, wife of John Heckedorn.[82]
Generally,
funerals were held in the late afternoon or early
evening. The funeral party
assembled at the home of the
deceased where they ate cake and a hot rum punch
or
sweetened cider. In an air of suspicion Muhlenberg wrote that
friends and
relatives came more for the rum and cake than for
To communicate
that a death had occurred, individuals called “warners” or “inviters” would go
door to door to inform neighbors and friends of the funeral arrangements.
Invitations to the funeral would often include cookies called “dead cakes” and a
handkerchief and gloves (or only one glove to cut costs) to be worn at the
proceedings. Andrew Eliot, minister of Boston's North Church, saved the gloves
that people sent to him. In 32 years he collected 3,000 pairs.5 A
neighbor or relative who had nursed the deceased might be given a silver spoon
or two, called “coffin spoons.” After the funeral, they were often hung on the
post of a cradle for infants to teeth on.6
In the 1700 and
1800s, mourning jewelry was popular, especially rings, symbolizing an eternal
link to the deceased. In wealthy families, rings were given out to near
relatives or important people in the community. These mourning rings were made
of gold and usually enameled in black or black and white, decorated with a
death’s head, a skeleton lying in a coffin, or a winged skull. Some rings held
a framed lock of hair from the deceased and others were shaped like a serpent
with its tail in its mouth. Popular inscriptions on the rings were “Death parts
United Hearts,” “Death conquers all,” “Prepare for Death,” or “Prepared be To
follow me.” Some rings bore the family crest. By the early 18th
century, providing so many gifts to the mourners became prohibitively expensive
– so much so that the Massachusetts colony passed legislation against it.
Anthropologists
believe that Paleolithic humans ate the flesh of their deceased as a way of
honoring them by keeping a bit of their essence after they passed on. During
the Middle Ages in Germany, a more symbolic integration took place. “After the
body had been washed and in its coffin, the woman of the house prepared
leavened dough and placed it to rise on the linen-covered chest of the corpse.
It was believed the dough “absorbed” some of the deceased's personal qualities
that were, in turn, passed on to mourners who ate the corpse cakes.”7
By the late 18th
century, little cakes or funeral “cookies” were handed out.
The common people in the Colonies tended
toward dense
shortbread funeral biscuits flavored with molasses, ginger or
caraway. Resembling modern-day cookies in size and shape,
these were often
formed in hand-carved wooden stamping
molds that embossed a cross, heart,
death's head or cherub
on their tops.
Diaries from Hudson Valley Dutch
communities include recipes
for doot coekjes or "death
cookies" that were "large as saucers"
and designed to be eaten
with hot spiced wine. One recipe called
for 50 pounds of flour, 20 pounds of
sugar and 10.5 pounds of
butter for 300 cookies delivered to the funeral in
bushel baskets.
Mourners were offered sweet wine in which to dunk and soften
the hard-textured confections.8
Originally a
card announcing the death was delivered to invite potential guests to the
funeral, but as printing technology evolved, the death notice became a detailed
wrapper for the cookie. On it would be printed bakery advertisements, Biblical
quotes, and poems, as well as information about the deceased and the funeral.
Guests would keep the wrapping paper as a keepsake much as we keep church holy
cards with funeral announcements today.
There were other
ways to commemorate the dead. The hair of the deceased was often cut off and fashioned
into a wreath to be displayed in the home. Mourning pictures were often
painted. A sailing ship meant the departure of the soul, and an oak tree
represented strength. An oak that was cut down or lying on its side represented
being cut down in one’s prime. Mourning portraits – paintings, drawings, or
embroidered hangings – of the family, including the deceased in his or her
coffin, were also popular. Sometimes favorite pets were included in these
scenes. “A small watercolor done by Martha Washington’s 17-year-old
granddaughter Nelly, in her grief over the death of her cousin Frances Bassett
Washington Lear in 1796, depicts a young woman weeping at a funeral monument,
with a small dog at her feet. Presumably Nelly and her little spaniel, that
woman is shown wearing a black, high-waisted gown.”9 After
cameras were invented, photos of the deceased either propped up in a sitting
position or lying in the casket or coffin were often taken as keepsakes.
In the 1800s and
into the Victorian era, proper mourning clothing became very important. Men
wore black cloaks, white scarves, and gloves. Widows grieved for two years and
wore all black dresses with no trim save crepe collars and cuffs. They wore
bonnets with a long black crepe veil. In addition to hiding the fact that the
woman had been crying, the veil was believed to protect the wearer and those
she encountered from an attachment by the spirit of the departed. The accepted
clothing was not as severe the second year; women were allowed a shorter veil and
the dresses could be trimmed with gray, white, or purple.
Up until the
middle 1800s, most clothing had been made at home. As mourning clothes were
needed quickly, they became the first off-the-rack garments that could be
bought. People in mourning could either buy ready-made black clothes, pay to
have a professional dye them, or dye the clothes themselves. The black dye had
such a strong unpleasant odor, that people dyed their clothes outdoors. The
dyes were only semi-permanent and commonly rubbed off on the mourner’s skin.
Women were
expected to mourn the loss of a husband for two years while men were only
expected to mourn the loss of a wife for a few months. If a widower took a new
wife within two years of his former wife’s death, the new wife was expected to
formally mourn the previous wife as if she were mourning the loss of her own
husband.
There were several superstitious Victorian funeral
practices. When a corpse was
in the house, all of the mirrors were kept covered to prevent the spirit of the
deceased from getting trapped. If someone died in the house in a room with a
clock, the clock had to be stopped at the time of death to prevent bad luck to
the family. A corpse leaving the house had to be carried out feet first so that
it could not look back and beckon others in the household to follow it into
death. Family photos were sometimes turned face-down to prevent the people in
the images from being possessed by the spirit of the dead.
While some of
the colonial and Victorian funeral traditions might seem strange today, they
did allow early Americans to deal with death in an open way. Customs and
rituals acknowledged to the world the passing of a loved one without a lot of
explanation, giving those affected the space, understanding, and time to
grieve. Most of the traditions died out before World War I with the advent of
mass marketing funeral home services, catering halls, and restaurants.
Individuals are simply not as intimately involved, for better or for worse,
with funeral preparations today.
* New England headstone inscription
-- More written by the author can be
found at www.marianneruane.com
Sources:
1 Customs and Fashions in Old New England: Funeral and Burial Customs↩
2 Digital History: Death in Early America↩
3 Customs and Fashions in Old New England: Funeral and Burial Customs↩
4 Life in Mid-Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania↩
5 Digital History: Death in Early America↩
6 Morbid Outlook: Funerary Practices in Early and Modern America↩
7 Historic Camden County: The Story of Victorian Funeral Cookies↩
8 Historic Camden County: The Story of Victorian Funeral Cookies↩
9 Historic Alexandria Quarterly: Death and Mourning in the Family of George Washington↩
No comments:
Post a Comment