How Death and Funerals Have Changed in the U.S.

Up until the Civil War era in the United States, we used to hold our funerals in our homes.

When we knew our loved ones were dying, it was common practice to remain with them. The family would nurse them by day and neighbors would “sit up” with them during the night. (They could alert family members if death was imminent.) It was important that they not die alone.

They died in their home. We spent time with our deceased, we tended to them properly and lovingly. We washed the body, combed their hair, dressed the body in clean clothing, laid them out, folded their hands, closed their eyes, and we grieved for them with others who visited our deceased loved one inside of our home.

Family, friends, and neighbors made meals, dug the grave, and constructed a coffin. Every aspect was respected and tended to. Deathcare was exceptionally personal and tailored to culture, religion, folklore, superstition, and what your family rituals were.

We held vigils where we prayed over a body and never left it alone. Day and night someone sat with the body. It was done out of respect to the deceased and served as a way to ward off unkind spirits. This time period of two to three days of body-watching was how we came to have “a wake.” Before the 1800s, it wasn’t that obvious sometimes that someone was actually dead. Closely observing them for two or three days would nearly assure they were dead and would not wake up.

Many towns had a group of women who would come to “lay out the dead.” They helped to organize and get things ready. People of means would make sure their finest possessions were displayed along with family portraits.

The body was laid out upon a door spanning two chairs, sawhorses, barrels, or whatever object kept the body fairly level. Sometimes the body was placed on the deceased’s bed or top of a table.

Death was not only talked about but it was truly a hands-on endeavor. Involvement in the whole process was a demonstration of the love, support, and compassion one had in the town or village that they lived within.

More affluent homes in the United States had a parlor. The funeral service was held in this room. In the parlor was a door that led directly to the outdoors—a clear shot with no steps or hills or slopes. The door was called a coffin door (or a death door) because that was the easiest way to get the coffin outside for burial. Some houses had coffin windows that served the same purpose. Funerals were open to the public and it was common for everyone in the community to stop by and pay respects.

The term funeral parlor originated from the parlor room of the family home. It was considered improper to take a deceased body out of the home’s front door because that is where the living entered. When the parlor was not in use for a funeral, it was called a “Living Room.”

Nowadays we purchase large extravagant sprays of flowers but this is only a modern tradition. In the old days, large displays of flowers were almost unheard of. Sometimes a small wreath or very small bouquet was hung from the front door. Women were often buried holding a single flower.

Back then, newspapers were published weekly, at best. There were no phones. As a pronouncement to the community that you were in mourning, you might hang black crepe on the door, a wreath, or window. Neighbors and loved ones would rally around you. Death might have been signaled with the toll of a school or church bell. An obituary, if affordable, was published at a later date.

Burials were mostly done on family property. When we established communities and those communities grew, we started creating common cemeteries where we could respectfully bury our dead. (*Early colonists in the United States did not refer to them as cemeteries, rather, “a burying place,” “boneyard,” “graveyard,” or “burying ground.”)

During the Civil War, we needed to preserve our bodies for long trips back home for burial. We adopted the practice the Egyptians used for thousands of years—embalming. It didn’t take long for amateur undertakers to set up shop near battlefields and make good money embalming bodies.

Most homes in the U.S. didn’t need to preserve the body because they were buried within a couple of days, oftentimes in twenty-four hours. But when President Lincoln died embalming became more popular. Since his body was going on a weeks-long national funeral procession he was embalmed. As a result, the process soon became adopted by the people. This allowed more time for people to make arrangements and for out-of-town visitors to be included.

This was not the case, however, for African Americans who were forced to delay their burials until Sunday. You see, Sunday was the only day slaves were allowed to bury their dead.

We had some superstitions about death back in those early days as well. Photos of other family members were turned face down to prevent the deceased from possessing them. Mirrors were covered or removed from the home altogether during the wake and funeral. The belief was that if you saw the deceased in the mirror, you would die next. Some believed that the soul of the deceased could get trapped in the mirror and fail to move on.

All the clocks in the home were stopped to reflect the exact time of death. Not doing this might bring bad luck to the family. When the body was carried from the home to burial, it was always feet first as to not be able to look back and lure the living into death.

Graves were to be dug the day of the burial. A grave dug in advance just invited other deaths of family or community members. If for some reason, there was a delay in the burial after the grave was dug, a few handfuls of dirt would be left in the bottom and removed just prior to the burial.

The coffin lid was lifted right before the body was lowered into the ground for mourners to get one last look. And don’t leave before the grave was filled, as that was bad luck.

The way we lived began changing in many urban areas. As a result, we started hiring out many of the aspects that we used to faithfully carry out personally for our deceased. It became difficult to take off multiple days of work to handle the responsibilities that came with honoring our dead. We began to hire these things out.

The town undertaker back in those days was usually the local furniture maker. He got the name “undertaker” because he undertook the responsibility for making the funeral arrangements. Early on, coffin making was merely a side business for them. Funeral homes started to be established and, as with everything else here, people argue over who the first. Most started as cabinet makers who made the occasional coffin as stated above. So some claim the industry as soon as the mid-1700s. Before 1700 (when the law allowed for the dead to be buried in a coffin), people were buried only wrapped in a winding-sheet—a shroud.)

Around the 1950s, coffins became caskets—a swankier version of the plain six-sided box. The casket had bells and whistles including being lined with a nice fabric.

Funeral homes are a multiBILLION dollar industry. They all started from small family-owned businesses long ago and even when they are sold to large corporations, the original name is retained because of familiarity to the consumer and to the town or neighborhood. Combine all this with the fact that by the early1900s we had large sanitized hospitals and you can see how we shifted completely. The intimate acquaintance we had with dying and death was forever changed. In less than a century, our whole concept of death has been outsourced. Death itself became a commodity.

Posthumous portraiture is a type of painting in the 18th and early 19th centuries in which wealthy Europeans (and later, Americans) used to memorialize their dead family members. Although the people in the portraits appear to be healthy, they are actually dead.

The paintings often included wilted flowers, a dead bird, a cut cord, or “the three-fingered grip” (a reference to the holy trinity.) This tells us the subject is deceased. It was an expression of love and loss. Sometimes this was the only physical image they had of that relative.

By the 1850s photography started to become popular and studios popped up everywhere. The expensive paintings nearly exclusive to those that could afford such extravagance went by the wayside, and postmortem photography became affordable for everyone, sometimes mere pennies for a small tintype of your deceased loved one memorialized.

You might think the photos in this blog post are a bit weird, but they were, in fact, commonplace to take one more family portrait and include the deceased. Photos were hung on walls, sent to family and friends, and put into lockets.

Funerals have gotten way out of hand, honestly. They are exploitive. Thankfully, as in all types of history, everything comes back around eventually. That is true as well with burials. We are now trending toward natural burials, returning to the earth as we did before money ran the show. A natural burial brings the sanctity of death back to the forefront. It places significance back on the love of family. People are once again beginning to have simpler, home funerals. The death industry will change for the better and it will not break your budget. People are starting to realize they have a choice in how they want their burial to look and feel—something to reflect their own beliefs and values. And that’s a good thing.

Looking back so long ago, the way we used to care for our dying and our deceased is exactly what a death doula does today. Funny how things come full circle.