JD Wall is interviewing Flora Lee Beckner on May 7, 1998 in Grapefield
...We have a cemetery up here at the United Methodist church and there too many that are buried there in it. We have thirteen or fourteen cemeteries in the valleys. Many of them have their own family cemeteries and there not too many buried here lately. Back before funeral homes, when someone died here in the valley, they called the doctor and the doctor had to come, of course, by horseback and somebody went horseback after him and he came and pronounced that they were dead and they left the corpse in the home where he died, or she died, or the baby died, and they a- the neighbors all went in and helped dress and helped prepare them and then we had a man in the valley that made, they called it a coffin, and they graded it all up and fixed it and padded it up with some kind of white silk and cotton and they just a- they would take them out and dug the grave for them and helped bury them. Before we started having any contact with any funeral home, or anything, like in Bluefield, Tazewell, or Bobby Newberry over in Bland.... |
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