Halloween and graveyards fit together like tombs and caskets, and Park City’s own Glenwood Cemetery is one of those sites filled with historic lore and tradition. Barbara Martz, a member of the Park City Historical Society and Museum board of trustees and research historian, will dig up some o f the death care practices from the late 1800s and early 1900s with her “Glenwood Cemetery Funerals” lecture that will start at 5 p.m. on Wednesday at the museum’s Education and Collections Center located at 2079 Sidewinder Drive.  The free presentation will showcase the characteristics of these burials and funerals, including Victorian-era mourning etiquette, influences from the dangerous frontier and mining realities, religious and cultural traditions of immigrants and strong community solidarity driven by local fraternal organizations.   Martz will start the lecture off with the origins of Halloween to get her audience into the spirit. “I think it all started with the Irish about 2,000 years ago with pagan celebrations they had around the first of November they called Samhain (pronounced SOW-en),” she said. “During the eight or ninth century, the Catholic Church wanted it to become more of a Chrsitian celebration and tied the celebration to All Saints Day or All Souls Day.” Nov. 1 was also known as All Hallows Day, and the night before was called All Hallows Eve, which was shortened to Hallowe’en, according to Marz “It was a time to remember the dead,” she said. “The church bells would ring on that night, and in Ireland there would be processions to cemeteries. In Sweden they would take candles into the cemeteries to remember the dead.” Pagans, who still hung onto their traditions, believed the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead was thin during that night, Martz said.  “This lecture will tie into that, and then I’ll talk about Park City and what the early undertakers did and what they were capable of doing, which wasn’t much,” she said. “By the time the undertaker arrived at the family’s house, the body would already have been cleaned by family members and neighbors who were always women.” The undertaker would then display the body on a cooling rack in the parlor, Martz said. “Death was so common during that time, so the purpose of the parlor was to be a place where you put the body of the dead and the flowers to have a small wake,” she said. The embalming process was also minimal, Martz said. “They used arsenic but didn’t have mortuaries, even though they had offices,” she said. “I think the first mortuary was at Miners Hospital in the early 1900s.” The caskets and coffins were made of wood and were usually offered for $25, Martz said. “There were more expensive and elaborate ones for prominent members of the community,” she said. Martz enjoyed researching Victorian-era etiquette. “That was something that I really didn’t know much about,” she said. “So it was interesting to learn what women had to wear and that even the men had rules they had to follow.” Martz will talk about the risks of living in the frontier, which left many infants exposed to contagious diseases. “I have a list of these diseases that I will read,” she said. Another topic Martz plans to address is the role of the fraternal orders that established the Glenwood Cemetery as a place where miners and their families could have the benefit of being interred for a small fee — insurance that the mining companies didn’t offer. If a miner died, the fraternity orders would pay for the funeral and burial and also provide money that would help widows and children. “I’ll focus on specific funerals and talk about the ones that were conducted by the lodges, which were big deals,” she said. “They would have huge gatherings in places like the Social Society Hall, the Masons Hall, the Elks and even the Dewey Theater. Also, gatherings at the churches — the Catholic and Methodists — were also quite common.” Then Martz will shine a light on some a couple of crazy events that took place during different funerals. “One happened during a funeral of a 6-month-old baby girl,” she said. “A large funeral procession came up the road, and a family named the Nelsons had a farm at the base of what is Park City Mountain.” The matron, Eliza Nelson, did not like the cemetery so close to her property, according to Martz. “So, she set up a barricade of barbed wire posts that blocked access to the cemetery,” she said. “The president of the cemetery went to move the barricade, and Eliza jumps out and tells him if he touches the fence, she will shoot him.” The cemetery president knew there would be trouble, so he brought the sheriff and city marshall along with the procession, Martz said. “When Eliza saw them she put the gun away and allowed the procession to proceed,” she said. “But she and a few of her family members stood by and yelled very inappropriate things to the family.” Another mishap occurred during the funeral of a man named Austin Decker, Martz said. “Behind the Glenwood is where all the mining happened, and the Crescent Tramway made a turn just above the cemetery,” she said. “According to The Park Record, the tram operator was paying more attention to the funeral than he was to the tram, and his cart hit the cart ahead of his. So he and the miners who were in his cart had to jump out onto the hill, and all the carts went down on the other side of the hill. People said everyone was lucky that there weren’t more funerals from that.” Martz will also talk about the funeral of Patrick Coughlin, one of Park City’s legendary outlaws. Coughlin was accused of stealing some strawberries from a local merchant, and things escalated to the point where he and his friend Fred George stole some horses, engaged in a Wild West shootout at a cabin in Rich County, which ended with two dead lawmen, including Echo’s own Constable Thomas A. Stagg. After a 150-mile manhunt, the law caught up with Coughlin, and after what is called a “questionable trial,” Coughlin was executed by firing squad. “Sometimes The Park Record was critical about some of these funerals, but in this case the writer said the 200 people who showed up for the funeral weren’t there to honor Patrick, but to show respect to the Catholic priest and show sympathy for Patrick’s mother,” Martz said.  Martz, who leads the Park City Museum’s Glenwood Cemetery tours, knows the burial site from years of research she has done with Diane Knispel, the museum’s education director. “We have also done a lot of reading of old Park Records, which was our biggest source of information,” she said. “The writers would describe funerals in great detail and talk about the big brass bands and parades down main street that honored some of the town’s biggest residents, and they would also describe the smaller funerals like the ones of several children who died of diphtheria that were very private. Funerals were a big deal at that time. They were big community events designed to pay respect to the people who died and the families they left behind.” ‘Glenwood Cemetery Funerals’ by Barbara Martz  When: 5 p.m., Wednesday Where: Park City Museum’s Education and Collections Center, 2079 Sidewinder Drive Cost: Free Web: parkcityhistory.org The post Historian exhumes Glenwood Cemetery funerals appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less