![]() Some wealthy northern families were willing to pay to have the bodies of deceased soldiers returned to them. Civil War upended this tradition.ĭuring the war, most bodies were left where they fell, decomposing in fields and trenches all over the South, or rolled into mass graves. The simple home funeral described above was the standard since the founding of the Republic, but the U.S. Everett Historical/ Embalming’s beginning How did we get here and how do American traditions compare with typical practices in other countries?Ī surgeon embalms a soldier’s body during the Civil War. ![]() Things have changed pretty substantially since America’s early days as funeral rites have moved out of the house and into the funeral home. In essence, your demise would be respectful but without pomp. No headstone, flowers or any of the other items we relate to a modern funeral. ![]() You would be interred without any preservative chemicals, without being cosmetized with touch-ups like skin dyes, mouth formers or eye caps. Before the body’s putrefaction advanced too far, the local carpenter would make a simple pine casket, and everyone would gather at the cemetery (or your own backyard, if you were a landowner) for a few words before returning you to the earth. Your immediate family and friends would visit your house over the course of the next week, few needing to travel very far, paying their respects at your bedside. If you died 200 years ago in America, your family would wash and dress your body and place it in a bed surrounded by candles to dampen the smell of decomposition.
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