Gone to the Grave: Burial Customs of the Arkansas Ozarks, 1850-1950 - Paperback

by Abby Burnett (Author)

A RICH SURVEY OF FOLK PRACTICES PRIOR TO MORTUARIES AND THE FUNERAL INDUSTRY Before there was a death care industry where professional funeral directors offered embalming and other services, residents of the Arkansas Ozarks--and, for that matter, people throughout the South--buried their own dead. Every part of the complicated, labor-intensive process was handled within the deceased's community. This process included preparation of the body for burial, making a wooden coffin, digging the grave, and overseeing the burial ceremony, as well as observing a wide variety of customs and superstitions. These traditions, especially in rural communities, remained the norm up through the end of World War II, after which a variety of factors, primarily the loss of manpower and the rise of the funeral industry, brought about the end of most customs. Gone to the Grave, a meticulous autopsy of this now vanished way of life and death, documents mourning and practical rituals through interviews, diaries and reminiscences, obituaries, and a wide variety of other sources. Abby Burnett covers attempts to stave off death; passings that, for various reasons, could not be mourned according to tradition; factors contributing to high maternal and infant mortality; and the ways in which loss was expressed through obituaries and epitaphs. A concluding chapter examines early undertaking practices and the many angles funeral industry professionals worked to convince the public of the need for their services. Abby Burnett, Kingston, Arkansas, is a former freelance newspaper reporter. She is the author of When the Presbyterians Came to Kingston: Kingston Community Church, 1917-1951.

Author Biography

Abby Burnett is an independent researcher who, as seen in the Arkansas Educational Television Network's 2010 documentary Silent Storytellers, studies such things as long-lost burial customs, tombstone symbolism, epitaphs, and the work of early stone carvers. She has written entries on graveyards, stone carvers, and early medicine for the online CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas, in addition to doing public speaking on all aspects of burial in Arkansas, her adopted state for the past forty years.