An Embalming Kit from Lynchburg's Oldest Business

 

Belonging to Walter A. Shaw, this embalming kit (ca. 1918) was used by the Diuguid Funeral Service, Lynchburg’s oldest surviving business and the second oldest funeral home in the country. While many might find this artifact a morbid oddity, this embalming kit gives us an opportunity to consider the history of this significant Lynchburg firm and the often overlooked work of the mortuary profession.

From Furniture Making to Funerals
The firm’s founder, Sampson Diuguid (1795-1856), was a furniture maker by trade, who settled in Lynchburg in 1817. Diuguid was a descendant of French Protestant Huguenots, and his unusual family name is believed to be a contraction of “Dieu Guide” meaning “God our guide.”(1)

Diuguid was initially a partner in the firm Winston and Diuguid, described as “Cabinetmakers, Upholsters, and Undertakers” in this December 14, 1818 notice in the Lynchburg Press:
“In expressing their gratitude for past favors, [Winston and Diuguid] respectfully informs the public that they have on hand a general assortment of furniture which they will sell on accommodating terms . . . They have likewise an assortment of cabinet makers materials for sale on the most accommodating terms, also an assortment of Windsor Chairs of good materials and workmanship. N. B. Their Hearse will in future run for customers free of charge[.] W&D” (2)


In the 1820s, Diuguid started operating independently, beginning to establish the respected funeral service that continues to the present-day. Recorded in 1820, the first entry in Diuguid’s burial records indicates that the furniture maker agreed to make a coffin for the child of John Victor, a Lynchburg silversmith, who repaid Diuguid with a set of silver spoons.(3)  In 1827, Diuguid purchased property at 616 Main Street, where his business remained for over 100 years until moving to 1016 Rivermont Avenue in the 1930s.

Diuguid's Legacy of Innovation & Record-Keeping
After Sampson Diuguid’s death in 1856, the business passed to his sons, and by 1880 his son George and grandson William were partners in the family firm. Inspired by seeing President James Garfield’s coffin during his elaborate 1881 funeral, this father and son team invented the wheeled catafalque, also called a church truck, which is still used to roll caskets down narrow aisles.(4) Grandson of the founder, William Diuguid, carried the firm into the 20th century and owned the funeral home at the time when embalmer William A. Shaw would have used this kit.  William Diuguid’s daughter Mary Sampson Diuguid, great-granddaughter of the founder, operated the funeral home from 1927-1948 and had a reputation for conducting weekly cleanliness inspections of the facility.


In 1946, Diuguid’s conducted their largest funeral, that of Senator Carter Glass. James P. Wilkerson, Jr., who worked at the home for over 50 years, remembered that the funeral procession stretched all the day from Diuguid’s to Spring Hill Cemetery.  Diuguid’s was the first funeral home in Virginia to use a motorized hearse although the firm also maintained a horse-drawn hearse for those who preferred it. Through the mid-twentieth century, funeral homes, like Diuguid’s, provided ambulance service as part of their business, although this transitioned to being the job of hospitals later in the century. Diuguid’s remained within the family for just over 130 years, being sold in 1948.(5)

In addition to Diuguid's contributions to Lynchburg business history and the funerary profession, the firm has left a valuable legacy through their careful record-keeping. In 1866, their records aided the United States government in moving the bodies of Union soldiers from Lynchburg cemeteries for re-interment in a National Cemetery near Norfolk.(6)  Now available online at the Old City Cemetery’s website, the Diuguid Burial Records include all the services provided by the firm from its first entry on January 14, 1820 through April 28, 1951, serving as an indispensable resource for genealogists and historians. Visitors to the Old City Cemetery can also view artifacts relating Diuguid’s, funerary practices, and mourning customs at their Mourning Museum and the Hearse House and Caretakers’ Museum.  

1. History of Diuguid Funeral Service, http://www.diuguidfuneralservice.com/who-we-are/history-of-diuguid-funeral-service (accessed 1 October 2013).
2. Diuguid Biographical File, Lychburg Museum System.
3. Diuguid Burial Records at the Old City Cemetery: About the Records, http://www.gravegarden.org/diuguid/about/index.php (accessed 18 October 2013).
4. History of Diuguid Funeral Service, http://www.diuguidfuneralservice.com/who-we-are/history-of-diuguid-funeral-service (accessed 1 October 2013).
5. Christina Nuckols, “Longtime owner of Diuguid’s recalls business’s earlier days,” The News & Advance, Lynchburg, Va., Sunday, February 12, 1995.
6. Diuguid Funeral Home Business File, Lynchburg Museum System.

--Author: Brandi Marchant, Museum Guide

School Days of September: A Look at Several Classroom Items in Our Collection

With yellow school buses all over town, it is clear that school is back in session. September seemed like a perfect month for sharing several classroom items from our collection: a rubber stamp set from 1932, a play program from 1929, and a report card from 1883.

The Classroom Printer, a large wooden box filled with rubber stamps featuring such designs as letters, words, animals, people, and buildings, inspired this reflection on the schoolrooms of the past. Although our stamp set is now an antique collector’s item, in its day it was an indispensable piece of classroom technology. A brief history of the rubber stamp shows how its invention greatly enhanced everyday people’s ability to communicate through printed words and images.

 

The Rubber Stamp: A Small But Mighty Tool

It is always fun to see how far an artifact can take us, and this month our Classroom Printer rubber stamps will take us first to the Amazon jungle, the source of rubber trees. Long known by natives as a waterproof coating and an adhesive, India rubber was first used outside the Amazon during the 18^th and early 19^th centuries to make pencil erasers. In the 1820s, the first waterproof raincoats utilized this rubber for their repellant coating. However while the wearers might have remained dry, the rubber coating also made them sticky. Somehow rubber needed to be made more stable, and in 1839, Charles Goodyear accomplished this through the addition of sulfur. Later in 1851, Goodyear received a patent for vulcanized rubber, a hard substance that was resistant to temperature changes, non-adherent, and almost completely insoluble. When a mixed sheet, consisting of rubber with additives, was heated to 280-290 degrees Fahrenheit, the rubber sheet became malleable for long enough to press it into a mold before it hardened (vulcanized) (1). 

While there were several different claimants to the status of rubber stamp creator, evidence seems to point to James Orton Woodruff as its true inventor. In a store during the mid-1860s, Woodruff observed washtubs with names and item numbers printed on their sides using a kind of stamp. Noting rubber’s effectiveness at applying ink, he set out to make rubber stamp letters. Ultimately, he found that small vulcanizers used in dental offices could help him create the stamps he desired (2).  The first rubber stamps were usually packaged and sold in “marking sets” that included the characters on today’s keyboards (3).

The field of business was the first to make use of rubber stamps for creating more professional and cost-effective signage. No longer did a business owner have to handwrite, stencil, or pay for sign printing. Now, he could create his own signs and merchandise labels using a set of rubber stamps. In the 1920s, rubber stamp sets became popular for classroom use, enabling teachers to make flashcards and worksheets. During the Depression when it became harder for schools to afford textbooks, these stamp sets helped teachers create their own materials. Classroom marking sets, like our 1932 Classroom Printer, could be purchased from door-to-door salesmen (4). Now that we are in a day of photocopied worksheets, full-color textbooks, and educational video and computer resources, our rubber stamp set helps us reflect on the challenges and triumphs of teachers in the past as they worked to open up the world of learning to their students.

Special thanks to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts for their research assistance on the history and influence of rubber stamps.  

 

Glass’s Speller Review of 1929: Honoring E.C. Glass for 50 Years of Service

Lynchburg has shown herself proud of the Glass name as she honors the contributions of that family to our local community, our state, and our country. While Senator Carter Glass receives much attention for his distinguished political career, his brother’s name might come up more often in everyday conversation. Today’s E. C. Glass High School was named in honor of Edward Christian Glass (1852-1931), the second superintendent of the city’s schools who served in that post for over 50 years (5).

Our second school artifact, a booklet entitled Glass’s Speller: A Review in Sixteen Episodes, is the program from a dramatic production organized by the Lynchburg School Board and Teachers’ Club in 1929 to honor his 50 years of service as superintendent. Narrated by the “Spirit of Learning,” the review follows the development of Lynchburg’s schools and pays tribute to his character and contributions as it features dramatic and musical talent from the area schools.

At the close of the review, the “Spirit of Learning” adds E. C. Glass to “the list of the earth’s great scholars” declaring that “in the pioneer days of Virginia’s public school system, [he] blazed a trail in education which has since become a highway for the youth of our state.”

 

On the Roll of Honor: A High School Report Card

 

Finally, it is report card time. In February 1883, Frank Johnson was placed on the “Roll of Honor” with an average of 96 2/5 recorded on his report card and signed by F. Roane. Founded in 1871, Lynchburg’s public school system was just over ten years old, but it would still be another 16 years before the completion of the first Lynchburg High School on Federal Street between 9^th and 10^th Streets, which combined all of Lynchburg’s white high school classes at one facility (see image below). Built by noted architect Edward Frye, the Lynchburg News hailed it as “probably the handsomest and best equipped High School building in the South” (6).

Over the next ten years, Lynchburg grew rapidly and soon required a larger high school building. When the new building opened on Park Avenue in 1910, the original Federal Street building became the Frank Roane School, an elementary school named for young Frank Johnson’s teacher. In 1920, the Park Avenue high school took the name of E. C. Glass, and finally, in 1953, the present-day E. C. Glass High School on Memorial Avenue was dedicated.

To check out images of Lynchburg’s schools, some still in use and some only in memory, visit the Lynchburg Museum’s historic photo collection and Nancy Marion’s photo collection.

 

1. Sheila McNellis Asato,“Rubber Stamps – New Phenomena or Ancient Tradition” (June 2003): 5-6 (text of article provided by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts).
2. Asato, 7-8.
3. Asato, 8.
4. Maja Beckstrom, “Stamp of Approval: The Popularity of Rubber Stamps Among Artists, Collectors and Crafters is Marked by a New Exhibit at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 17, 2004 (text provided by Minnesota Center for Book Arts).
5. James M. Elson, Lynchburg, Virginia: The First Two Hundred Years, 1786-1986 (Lynchburg: Warwick House Publishers, 2004), 367-368.
6. S. Allen Chambers, Jr., Lynchburg: An Architectural History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), 317.   

--Author: Brandi Marchant, Museum Guide