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For the first time during the annual Prairie Day at George Washington Carver National Monument, a presenter told about burial customs during the late 19th century.
“I did some studying on it,” said Yvonne Weeks, of the Joplin Museum Complex. “I came to find out that a lot of the practices were based on Victorian practices. After Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert died, she went into mourning almost 40 years. Basically the traditions were pretty well consistent in the area. When a woman was mourning her husband, she would go into mourning for approximately three years.”
Weeks was dressed in a long black dress with some lace at the top and on the cuffs. Her table was situated just outside of the Carver Cemetery on the grounds of the national monument.
“The dress that I am wearing would be the second phase of her mourning, about a year after his death,” she said. “But it is interesting to note that the women in the community were responsible for taking care of those that passed away. The term ‘wake’ actually came from that period of time, because they would sit around and watch the people making sure that they did not wake up, because there were so many illnesses that caused people to be comatose for such a long period of time, that they wanted to make sure that they were really dead.”
Weeks said spouses would lay the body out in their parlor, keep them there three, five, maybe seven days, “depending on when the stench reached a point they could no longer stand it, they knew that the person was actually dead and then they would go ahead and conduct the burial service.”
The women would also be the ones to wash the body, dress it and fix the hair for the service.
A horse would carry the casket to the graveyard, while the mourners would follow.
“Here (Carver Cemetery), Moses Carver was not a person that was into organized religion, as much as he was, but a very spiritual person,” Weeks said. “But when they laid out the cemetery, they laid it out according to the traditional practice of looking to the east, for the second coming of Jesus. As you can see, all of the graves here are pointed in that direction.”
Prior to the burial, another “tradition” was to have their pictures taken.
“They also took a lot of coffin pictures, especially if it was a child who died,” said Weeks, “and the people would take pictures with the dead people, because a lot of times they would come in from elsewhere to visit the people, especially those who passed away or to pay their respects.”
For the first time during the annual Prairie Day at George Washington Carver National Monument, a presenter told about burial customs during the late 19th century.
“I did some studying on it,” said Yvonne Weeks, of the Joplin Museum Complex. “I came to find out that a lot of the practices were based on Victorian practices. After Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert died, she went into mourning almost 40 years. Basically the traditions were pretty well consistent in the area. When a woman was mourning her husband, she would go into mourning for approximately three years.”
Weeks was dressed in a long black dress with some lace at the top and on the cuffs. Her table was situated just outside of the Carver Cemetery on the grounds of the national monument.
“The dress that I am wearing would be the second phase of her mourning, about a year after his death,” she said. “But it is interesting to note that the women in the community were responsible for taking care of those that passed away. The term ‘wake’ actually came from that period of time, because they would sit around and watch the people making sure that they did not wake up, because there were so many illnesses that caused people to be comatose for such a long period of time, that they wanted to make sure that they were really dead.”
Weeks said spouses would lay the body out in their parlor, keep them there three, five, maybe seven days, “depending on when the stench reached a point they could no longer stand it, they knew that the person was actually dead and then they would go ahead and conduct the burial service.”
The women would also be the ones to wash the body, dress it and fix the hair for the service.
A horse would carry the casket to the graveyard, while the mourners would follow.
“Here (Carver Cemetery), Moses Carver was not a person that was into organized religion, as much as he was, but a very spiritual person,” Weeks said. “But when they laid out the cemetery, they laid it out according to the traditional practice of looking to the east, for the second coming of Jesus. As you can see, all of the graves here are pointed in that direction.”
Prior to the burial, another “tradition” was to have their pictures taken.
“They also took a lot of coffin pictures, especially if it was a child who died,” said Weeks, “and the people would take pictures with the dead people, because a lot of times they would come in from elsewhere to visit the people, especially those who passed away or to pay their respects.”
There is a reason why women would have to mourn for three years while men, on the other hand, only mourned for three months.
“A lot of that [men mourning for only three months] was out of necessity, because they would have the children to raise and then they would have their property to tend to,” she said. “So they would only mourn about three months, and then take on another wife.
“[For women], the first year mourning would be completely in black, no jewelry whatsoever,” Weeks said. “The lace added onto it would signify she was ready to move onto the next phase of accepting company. Then, eventually, it would be acceptable for her to marry.”
Weeks said the Civil War changed some traditions, but then people fell back into tradition again.
