Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

Of funerals and their management, in early times, I have not much to say. Most of the funeral customs of ancient days had passed away before I was born. Funeral feasts and the gifts of gloves and scarfs and rings, a serious tax on the mourners, and a substantial profit to the officiating clergymen and pall bearers, who received them, were no longer in vogue. Until about the middle of the eighteenth century, prayers formed no part of a funeral ceremony, and it is said that the first prayer at a funeral in Boston was offered by Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncey at the interment of Rev. Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, pastor of the First Church, July 9, 1766. The sermon, which introduced the custom, which prevailed later of preaching funeral sermons, was preached by Dr. John Clarke in the Brattle street meeting house at the interment of Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, who died September 29, 1783. The rings given at funerals were of black enamel, edged with gold, inscribed with the name, age and date of the death of the deceased. The only one I ever saw was found a few years ago in the garden of the house which stood on the site of the Plymouth Savings Bank, and given to me. Recognizing the initials on the ring, and the date of death as those of one whose descendant at one time lived in the house referred to, I gave it to one of the family. It is said that Rev. Andrew Eliot, pastor of what was called the new North Church in Boston, received twenty-nine hundred and forty gloves at funerals, weddings and baptisms, a large number of which he sold, receiving therefor a very considerable addition to his salary. It was a custom which has not been abolished many years, on the Sunday after the death of a relative, to have a note read to the congregation asking prayers for the loss of a parent or wife or husband or friend. I have heard on some occasions as many as a dozen of these notes read before the announcement of the text of the sermon. An amusing story is told of a note, asking prayers for an inconsolable husband for the loss of a beloved wife, being found in a pulpit bible by a clergyman supplying the pulpit for the day only, who supposing it a new one, read it to the congregation, who had listened to it a year before, much to the consternation of the inconsolable husband, who was present in the church with a new bride. Though the custom of a funeral dinner, at which the pall bearers were guests, which has been described as

“Containing lots of fun,

Like mourning coaches, when the funeral’s done,”

had disappeared, I remember when it was the invariable custom for the pall bearers to return with the mourners to the house of the deceased and indulge in such wine or liquor as best suited their tastes. This custom continued until the temperance agitation about 1833, and has never been resumed. Funeral customs were different in different places, some inherited from the Dutch, and some from the English. In New York there were as in Massachusetts before the introduction of the hearse, six bearers who relieved each other in carrying the coffin on a bier to the grave, and six others who walked beside the bier, each holding a tassel of the pall or funeral cloth. At Mrs. Catalina de Peyster’s funeral, six young ladies attended as pall bearers dressed in white sarcinet jackets and petticoats with their heads uncovered, and their hair powdered and done up with white ribbon. The first hearse was used in Boston in 1796, and the first in Plymouth was used at the funeral of Thomas Pope, the father of the late Capt. Richard Pope, who died July 6, 1820. The first funeral which I remember, was that of Henry Warren, which I saw forming in front of his late residence on the corner of North street, but the first one I attended, was that of my great uncle, Samuel Davis, at Mrs. Nicolson’s boarding house on Court Square, where he died July 10, 1829. I can point out the very spot where, holding my mother’s hand, I listened to the passing bell, and waited impatiently for the procession to start. I thought then that the passing bell merely announced the march of the procession, and did not realize that it was really the celebration of the passage of a human soul through the gates of heaven.

The funeral hearse has a varied history, and in its present use has been diverted from its original design and purpose. At various early times the hearse and the catafalque were the same, and neither was ever used as a vehicle. It was a temporary structure set up in a chapel or house or place of burial, sometimes constructed at great cost, where the body lay for a time in state. In Strype’s Memorials the funeral ceremonies of the bishop of Winchester are described, after which, as he says, the body “was put into a wagon with four horses all covered with black.” Strype also describes the funeral of Henry the Eighth at which “in the chapel was ordained a goodly formal hearse with four score square tapers; every light containing two foot in length poising in the whole eighteen hundred weight of wax garnished about with pensils and escutcheons banners and bannerols of descents, and at the four corners four banners of saints beaten in fine gold upon damask.” He further says, that “on the 14th of February the chariot was brought to the Court hall door and the corpse with great reverence brought from the hearse to the same.” These extracts show conclusively that the hearse was a temporary structure erected in a chapel, or elsewhere, and that since the abandonment of its use, its name has been transferred to the vehicle carrying the body to the grave.

In early chapters I have alluded to various habits and customs prevailing during my boyhood, but have left untouched many associated with every day life. A reference to these, like charity, must begin at home, and as I recall my boyhood days and everything associated with them, I realize,

“How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start,

When memory plays an old tune on the heart.”

How well I remember the room, in which the family spent their evenings around the square centre table, lighted perhaps by two brass lamps, or by what was called an astral lamp, which was the first step in that series of illuminating contrivances, which included afterwards first the solar and then the carcel lamp, finally culminating in gas, which was introduced into Plymouth in 1855. For special occasions spermaceti candles were added, which were made at home in candle moulds with spermaceti bought at the Plymouth oil factory. Tallow candles and bayberry candles were used by many less well to do people, and to them kerosene oil, which came into use about the time of the introduction of gas at a price lower than whale oil, was a welcome boon. In the material world I know no greater civilizer than this oil has been among our people. The houses of those in the smaller towns, and in the suburbs of our own town, in which the sputtering oil lamp was extinguished at what was called early candle light, sending the occupants to bed, now display a cheerful sitting room, in which a centre table with books and magazines, and a parlor organ, or perhaps a piano, afford means of education and amusement, and promote a higher and a longer life. Some years ago statistics showed that insanity was especially prevalent among farmers with their days of constant and anxious work, unrelieved by seasons of amusement and good cheer. But kerosene oil has changed all this, and has lifted the curtain which once shut out the light of a cheerful life, and has immeasurably broadened the horizon within which farmers live.

What evenings those were at our home, the mother with her children, unattracted by clubs and societies away from the grand functions of a mother’s life; the children, out of the street, supplementing the instruction of school with that which only a parent could furnish. I know no greater change within my lifetime than that exhibited by the lessening influence of home. It has been brought about, partly by the disintegrating effect of civilized life, which with new means of heating and lighting, has scattered the members of a family, leaving no fireside to gather around, and has drawn them for intellectual and moral instructions beyond the limits of home; and partly, I am sorry to say, by the inculcation in some quarters of the idea that the management of a family and home is a drudgery, which should be avoided in the search for what is called a higher life. It seems useless to ask why the management of an institution incorporated by the acts of God, than which nothing can be nobler, is any more drudgery than the management of a railroad or steamboat or factory, incorporated by the legislature of the state. I halt, however, on the threshold of a subject too broad for discussion here, and only alluded to because I believe it to be one touching the best and truest life of society.