Prior to the Civil War, most funerals included the viewing of the deceased in the family parlor, and soon thereafter a trip to the local burial ground.

The tremendous amount of deaths occurring in the Civil War marked an abrupt change in the way people viewed funerals and burial rights. Embalming, which had not been widely used in the U.S., became more common when President Lincoln took an interest in embalming and directed the Quartermaster Corps to utilize preservation techniques that would allow the return of Union dead to their hometowns for proper burial. It is estimated that approximately 100,000 Union soldiers who died on the battle field were embalmed by an army of embalming surgeons.

Our speaker this month, Michael T. Stock, is the Manager of Acheson & Graham Garden of Prayer Mortuary in Riverside, and has 15 years' experience in funeral and cemetery service in California and New York. His PowerPoint presentation will cover funeral service and burial rituals in American history for over 400 years, starting with the Puritan settlers and then moving on to the age of enlightenment, the Civil War and the assassination / funeral of Abraham Lincoln. He will also cover all the major turning points in America that changed funeral service and people's views of grief. Embalming procedures & cremation history, along with the current cremation rates in the United States, will also be discussed.

Please join us as we learn how death, which touched almost every family in America during the Civil War, was dealt with.

Janet Whaley
Program Chair

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