Lincoln & Stanton

[L Verge]

This will probably convince all of you that I come from a weird family, but my grandparents lost their first child in 1901 at the age of 22 months. Their second child was born six days after that death, and neither parent could readily accept the new baby. My uncle (#2) had to be given to a wet nurse for several weeks because my grandmother would not or could not bring herself to nurse him.

My grandfather mourned so deeply that nearly a year later he went to the family cemetery with a hired hand and dug up the dead baby. The child was perfectly preserved, but had turned coal black. Later people have said that the soil and the hand-dug brick vault probably accounted for the change in color. Luckily for our family, the baby was put back in the grave.

I have been well aware of photos of adults, mothers, and children being photographed in death. However, I was not prepared for the funeral of my husband's grandfather in the 1970s. Jeda was Russian and had emigrated to America to escape the Czar's draft. When he died, the family was very careful to get good photographs of him in his casket to send back to his relatives still in Russia. They told me that they needed to prove to his loved ones back there that he had been laid to rest in grand style. It was a symbol that he had been loved and cared for.

When you hear of "oddities" of death rituals within your own realm, it makes understanding Edwin Stanton and people of his era a little easier.