Old Receiving Vault, Union Baptist Cemetery
A receiving vault is an underground crypt or above-ground building built within a cemetery, with the purpose of storing the bodies of deceased persons in winter months when the ground is too frozen to dig a permanent grave.
Modern mechanical all-weather digging tools have mostly replaced the need for receiving vaults in today's cemeteries.
In the early 20th century, the United States Public Health Service (Marine Hospital Service) issued rules about receiving vaults, that they should be "cleared, cleaned, and disinfected" before May 1 each year, and that keeping a body there for more than 72 hours between May and September was to be avoided.
Cities have different ordinances about the storage of bodies in these vaults.
May 01, 1994|DAVID SHARP | ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARSONSFIELD, Me. — A darker, more urgent rite of spring follows the melting snow and blooming daffodils in northern New England. As the earth thaws after one of the worst winters on record, cemetery workers are rushing to bury hundreds of people who died months ago.
In tiny Van Buren, funeral director Jim Ouellette is already on the phone contacting families, getting plots readied and assigning burial times. "It's going to be crazy," said Ouellette, who runs funeral homes in Van Buren and Ashland. "Fifty percent of our (annual) burials will take place in a three-week period in May."
Ouellette has 30 delayed burials scheduled for various cemeteries in May, with 15 set for one day alone at St. Bruno's cemetery in Van Buren.
Across the frosty northern tier of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Upstate New York, funeral directors estimate that burials for fully 80% of winter deaths must be delayed until the ground thaws.
Newspaper obituaries commonly include the phrase, "Burial will be in the spring."
Some modern cemeteries can conduct burials throughout the winter, clearing plots with snowplows and cutting into the frozen turf with jackhammers.
But most of the tidy, older cemeteries that dot the landscape of northern New England close when the snow piles up and the ground freezes, sometimes 7 feet deep.
In Parsonsfield, a person can't walk in the woods without stumbling across a graveyard. There are more than 100 small cemeteries here, although only five remain active. Traditionally, all close for the winter, said Diane Morrill at the town office.
May provides a brief window of burial opportunity, between the first week when most cemeteries reopen and Memorial Day, when many families make special visits of remembrance to grave sites.
Through the winter, bodies are usually kept at the cemeteries in caskets placed in charnel houses, a Dickensian term for receiving vaults. The vaults offer security and natural cooling for the remains.
This communication from A.S. Bates, the Chicago City Sexton during the years of 1843-1851, speaks of his constraints in properly burying the bodies that have been waiting in the receiving vault.
June 6, 1851
To the Honorable the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Chicago in Common Council assembled.
Gentlemen
As there are a good many bodies at present in the Vaults, the relations of whom have been waiting now for some time, so as to purchase lots and have them interred, it is necessary that some immediate action be taken by the Council in regard to the sale of lots in the Cemetery, as several of the bodies on account of decomposition cannot remain in the vault much longer.
I am,
Gentlemen,
Your most obedient servant,
A.S. Bates
City Sexton
Old Receiving Vault, Union Baptist Cemetery
A receiving vault is an underground crypt or above-ground building built within a cemetery, with the purpose of storing the bodies of deceased persons in winter months when the ground is too frozen to dig a permanent grave.
Modern mechanical all-weather digging tools have mostly replaced the need for receiving vaults in today's cemeteries.
In the early 20th century, the United States Public Health Service (Marine Hospital Service) issued rules about receiving vaults, that they should be "cleared, cleaned, and disinfected" before May 1 each year, and that keeping a body there for more than 72 hours between May and September was to be avoided.
Cities have different ordinances about the storage of bodies in these vaults.
May 01, 1994|DAVID SHARP | ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARSONSFIELD, Me. — A darker, more urgent rite of spring follows the melting snow and blooming daffodils in northern New England. As the earth thaws after one of the worst winters on record, cemetery workers are rushing to bury hundreds of people who died months ago.
In tiny Van Buren, funeral director Jim Ouellette is already on the phone contacting families, getting plots readied and assigning burial times. "It's going to be crazy," said Ouellette, who runs funeral homes in Van Buren and Ashland. "Fifty percent of our (annual) burials will take place in a three-week period in May."
Ouellette has 30 delayed burials scheduled for various cemeteries in May, with 15 set for one day alone at St. Bruno's cemetery in Van Buren.
Across the frosty northern tier of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Upstate New York, funeral directors estimate that burials for fully 80% of winter deaths must be delayed until the ground thaws.
Newspaper obituaries commonly include the phrase, "Burial will be in the spring."
Some modern cemeteries can conduct burials throughout the winter, clearing plots with snowplows and cutting into the frozen turf with jackhammers.
But most of the tidy, older cemeteries that dot the landscape of northern New England close when the snow piles up and the ground freezes, sometimes 7 feet deep.
In Parsonsfield, a person can't walk in the woods without stumbling across a graveyard. There are more than 100 small cemeteries here, although only five remain active. Traditionally, all close for the winter, said Diane Morrill at the town office.
May provides a brief window of burial opportunity, between the first week when most cemeteries reopen and Memorial Day, when many families make special visits of remembrance to grave sites.
Through the winter, bodies are usually kept at the cemeteries in caskets placed in charnel houses, a Dickensian term for receiving vaults. The vaults offer security and natural cooling for the remains.
This communication from A.S. Bates, the Chicago City Sexton during the years of 1843-1851, speaks of his constraints in properly burying the bodies that have been waiting in the receiving vault.
June 6, 1851
To the Honorable the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Chicago in Common Council assembled.
Gentlemen
As there are a good many bodies at present in the Vaults, the relations of whom have been waiting now for some time, so as to purchase lots and have them interred, it is necessary that some immediate action be taken by the Council in regard to the sale of lots in the Cemetery, as several of the bodies on account of decomposition cannot remain in the vault much longer.
I am,
Gentlemen,
Your most obedient servant,
A.S. Bates
City Sexton