Skull of Civil War Soldier to be Auctioned

[L Verge]

Your descriptions of the funeral "food" rituals reminds me of the first time we did this exhibit at Surratt House back in the 1980s. We arranged a visit with one of the oldest funeral establishments in Washington, D.C. - one that had been in business in the mid-1800s and still thrives today. Let's just say that we got much more on that tour than we ever wanted to know. They did lend us some nice antiques for our display, but after touring the embalming room, the crematorium, and getting a full explanation of something that appeared to be a stone cobbler's bench (think mortar and pestle for grinding), if a loved one of mine had died that night, he/she would have been packed in the trunk of my car and taken to the family burial ground to be placed in a hand-dug grave. No mortician would have been allowed to touch the body.

This was/is a top-rated funeral home, and everything they showed us had been or was part of the normal practice - but it freaked me out for months. One of the saddest parts was seeing rows upon rows of packages containing the cremated remains of people whose relatives or friends never came to claim the body. They dated back for decades.