The Iron Coffin: An Artifact Out of Place and Time Recovered from the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "In Small Things Remembered II: An Archaeology of Affective Objects and Other Narratives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

For the poor and indigent buried at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (MCPFC), it was the Board of Supervisors of Milwaukee County who, by the late 1800s, contracted local undertakers to supply the MCPFC with burial containers. This practice of contracting for construction of coffins continued until the turn of the last century when coffin construction was undertaken by inmates of the Almshouse and the Insane Asylum. With one exception, a cast iron coffin, the juvenile-sized coffins excavated in 2013 were wood. This coffin was out of style and common use at the time of interment. This paper uses contemporary records to identify potential businesses of funeral directing, embalming, and livery services who may have provided such a curious coffin. Archaeological and osteological context, as well as historical documentation, explores how a child whose family could not provide a traditional cemetery interment was buried in a cast iron coffin.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• In Small Things Remembered II: An Archaeology of Affective Objects and Other Narratives

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow