Skull of Civil War Soldier to be Auctioned

[LincolnToddFan]

(06-04-2014 11:25 AM)J. Beckert Wrote:  Common decency prevails.

http://news.yahoo.com/gettysburg-skull-a...ZJUDQzMV8x

Thank goodness! Somewhere at one time this was a flesh and blood human being with people who loved and cared about him.

Where do people get these ideas?!

[J. Beckert]

I agree, Toia. No one deserves to end up as a knick-knack in a collector's library. While we don't have to turn everything into a shrine, this was the right thing to do. Maybe Betty will shed some light on how she got Powell's skull returned to his family.

Hopefully this is a case that just slipped through the cracks because it was found so long ago. I know anytime an artifact or human remains are found while excavating today, the job abruptly halts. There was an archaeological dig on a job I worked on last year on the Delaware River. They couldn't move a shovel full of dirt unless a member of the Indian tribe was on the site.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Hope this doesn't sound impolite - I'm just curious. May I ask - the receipe appears to me like a common basic butter cookie receipe (seems all my last years Xmas cookies were accidentally mourning cookies...). I expected a special symbolic ingredient or spice, something unique. Is it just the "holy" decoration and wrapping that makes a butter cookie a mourning cookie, or did I miss something?

[L Verge]

Eva,

See Post #15 that I added later that had a more spiced-up recipe. I think the idea is basically symbolic - much like some weddings hand out the wedding cake slices in little packages to take home and dream upon.

I'm like you, however, and wonder if there is a spice connected with the death ritual. More research.

Back to the desecration of graves. That makes me furious. When I was in my twenties, it was a big thing for the teenagers to go into old cemeteries and dig up skulls to display with their trophies. I also remember an incident where a Revolutionary War soldier's grave in our area (in a private cemetery on his ancestral farm) was disturbed by developers, who took the sword and belt buckle that were still intact and bragged about their find. Disgusting people.

[Eva Elisabeth]

(06-05-2014 08:56 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Eva,

See Post #15 that I added later that had a more spiced-up recipe. I think the idea is basically symbolic - much like some weddings hand out the wedding cake slices in little packages to take home and dream upon.

I'm like you, however, and wonder if there is a spice connected with the death ritual. More research.

Thanks Laurie! I was thinking of something symbolic like the bitter herbs in Easter bread to commemorate the bitterness of the event and days (thus the receipe with caraway seeds and cardamon would make more sense to me). Or a background like eating cruller fried in lots of oil on carnival (Mardi Gras) to have a last calories fiesta before the coming 40 days of fastening - still in winter, and in medieval times with more hard physical labor much more a challenge than nowadays.

[LincolnToddFan]

(06-05-2014 08:56 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Eva,

See Post #15 that I added later that had a more spiced-up recipe. I think the idea is basically symbolic - much like some weddings hand out the wedding cake slices in little packages to take home and dream upon.

I'm like you, however, and wonder if there is a spice connected with the death ritual. More research.

Back to the desecration of graves. That makes me furious. When I was in my twenties, it was a big thing for the teenagers to go into old cemeteries and dig up skulls to display with their trophies. I also remember an incident where a Revolutionary War soldier's grave in our area (in a private cemetery on his ancestral farm) was disturbed by developers, who took the sword and belt buckle that were still intact and bragged about their find. Disgusting people.

I agree with you about the desecration of graves. There is a special section of Hell reserved for people who do this...or at least I hope. I can't understand why the ghouls who disturbed that Revolutionary War soldier's grave and stole items were not prosecuted?

[Eva Elisabeth]

(06-05-2014 08:56 AM)L Verge Wrote:  I'm like you, however, and wonder if there is a spice connected with the death ritual. More research.

More research said Laurie...well, while searching for a meaning of spices or other ingredients in mourning and also for possible origins of the Victorian traditions - I didn't find much, but some interesting asides that IMO fit here well and are worth sharing. Voilà a copy & paste summary:

Commemorative eating and drinking customs at funerals go back so far in time that Paleolithic humans are believed to have dined on the corpse itself before they buried it. Those ancestors - "cave men" - were the first humans to perceive some higher meaning in death and to ceremonially entomb their dead. It's likely that eating a bit of a deceased loved one was an effort to both honor and incorporate their essence into one's own. Anthropologists believe this grisly habit evolved into the somewhat more civilized mourning practices throughout medieval Europe and ultimately gave rise to the "funeral biscuits" in the Victorian age.

Emerging from the Middle Ages in old Germany, for instance, was the funeral tradition of eating "corpse cakes" that symbolically mirrored the act of eating the deceased. After the body had been washed and laid 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.

The practice of funeral cookies however is believed to have evolved from another earlier custom of hiring ‘sin-eaters’ during a funeral. A sin-eater was usually a man of poor means who was hired to sit before the casket and eat and drink food that was handed to him over the coffin. The belief at the time was that the sins of the deceased person would be ingested by the sin-eater as he ate the meal.

Funeral cookies at least were, in a way, a secular communion – in the spirit of Christ’s Last Supper.

British children of yesteryear were eagerly awaiting the death of others in expectation of the cookies, like in the following article, "Scotch Funerals,” published in 1883’s "The Living Age":
"My grandfather...always had one or two of his grandchildren awaiting his return from any burial he attended, who were often not disappointed in seeing the coveted morsel produced from his pocket and having it shared among them."

Americans however, as Laurie said, preferred to keep the cookies to alway remind them of the person who died.

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BTW, if you don't want to end up in a jar of formalin check the small print of what you sign before your next surgery. At least at our local university hospital the consent form contains a paragraph in small print in which you agree to donate your body to the university for the education of the medicine students in case of decease. Most people who sign the consent form before undergoing a surgery actually don't know that they sign this paragraph, too.

[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.

[Eva Elisabeth]

(06-07-2014 07:14 PM)L Verge Wrote:  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.

That is a sad ending (and a scaring thought when you have no descendants or other younger relatives).

---

As for death and disrespectfulness - there are two things about which I'm on the fence as for what to think about them, and I'd like to learn how you think. "Disrespectful" is actually not exactly what I think, maybe rather was it right to do this?

1. The embalming of A. Lincoln's body, especially as if I remember correctly something went wrong and too much of the chemical substance was used or so (does anyone know? Can't find it right now - I might be wrong either.) I think whether to preserve a body for eternity is a matter and issue of believe and faith and ok if it was the deceased's wish, but not everyone wants that, and several people believe it objectable to God's will - according to Gen 3: 19: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" and Ecclesiastes 12 :7 "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."

Would A. Lincoln have liked his body embalmed? (I wouldn't! Too artificial, not for Genesis, but somehow I don't feel such shall be.) In case we can't be sure he would have liked - was it right to do so? BTW, who made the decision (or who agreed on it? Mary? Robert?)?

I'll ask for #2 later and hope for your comments on this first.

[LincolnToddFan]

Hi Eva E.,

From what I have read Mary was not at all enthusiastic about the idea of a long cross country funeral for AL. The idea was originally presented to Edwin Stanton, who approved of it. Mary was finally persuaded only on the condition that Willie must also be disinterred for the journey with his father.

Since the remains would be viewed over a period of three or so weeks it was of course essential that the most skilled embalming techniques available at the time be deployed. This was supervised by Stanton, who also selected AL's burial garments and even gave instructions to the morticians on how the late president's beard was to be trimmed.

Strange, I agree. But Mary could not and would not have any part of the burial of her beloved husband. The few people who were allowed in to see her reported that she was "more dead than alive" during those last few weeks at the WH. So Edwin Stanton and of course Robert planned everything.

[RJNorton]

I believe the embalmer of President Lincoln was a man named Henry P. Cattell. He worked for the firm of Brown & Alexander. He was the same man who had embalmed Willie back in 1862. Cattell said he used 'chroride of zinc' in the embalming process. I believe Charles Brown (of Brown and Alexander) and an undertaker named Frank Sands rode the funeral train and worked on the president's remains throughout the journey in an attempt to make them look in proper condition in each city along the route.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Many thanks for all the info!

[HerbS]

Laurie,There has been a large investigation and conviction of funeral homes selling "body parts"for various reasons in the Rochester area.I used that funeral home for both of my parents.

[LincolnToddFan]

(06-08-2014 05:21 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  I believe the embalmer of President Lincoln was a man named Henry P. Cattell. He worked for the firm of Brown & Alexander. He was the same man who had embalmed Willie back in 1862. Cattell said he used 'chroride of zinc' in the embalming process. I believe Charles Brown (of Brown and Alexander) and an undertaker named Frank Sands rode the funeral train and worked on the president's remains throughout the journey in an attempt to make them look in proper condition in each city along the route.

That's right Roger. By the time the remains reached NYC on April 26th, 11 days after AL's death, his disappearance had deteriorated to the point that the NY Times reported it was "distressing" to view him.

I think at that point the coffin should have remained permanently closed, but the crowds wanted a last look at AL so that was that.

The one photo that exists of Lincoln in death was taken in NY. He looked okay to me...almost preternaturally peaceful in fact.

[Gene C]

(06-03-2014 08:41 PM)L Verge Wrote:  There is a small booklet on the customs which features research done by our own Betty O. Just let me know at laurie.verge@pgparks.com if you would like a copy sent to you.

Received mine this weekend. Haven't had the chance to read it yet, but a quick glance tells me it is very nicely done. Thanks Betty O and Laurie. A quality booklet.