A funeral notice that has survived for 157 years

Walk to the service counters of many businesses in Chariton (and other small Iowa towns) as a new week begins this morning, glance down and you'll find small printed sheets containing funeral service particulars for last rites pending at Fielding or Pierschbacher funeral home.

What you're seeing is a continuation of a funeral tradition --- launched at a time when the goal was to let as many people as possible know about a pending funeral but there were no radio stations, social media pages or funeral home web sites.

William S. Boyd was a Chariton grocer who died at the age of 34 on the 8th of August, 1866, of causes long lost to time. And the printed announcement of his funeral has survived 157 years. It's now in the collection of the Lucas County Historical Society.

This bit of ephemera is a 5-inch by 7-inch piece of lined paper, heavily bordered in black, bearing a message that reads, "You are respectfully invited to attend the funeral of W. S. Boyd, at the M. E. Church, at 4 o'clock P.M., today. Chariton, Aug. 9, 1866."

Mr. Boyd's widow, Catherine (Wright) Boyd, did not remarry and continued to live in Chariton until her death at 85 during November of 1921. It most likely was then that her surviving children erected the tombstones that now mark family graves in the Chariton Cemetery: William S. (1834-1866), General (1862-1865), Emma May (1863-1864), Nelly Blanche (1865-1866) and Catherine (1835-1921).

Three children were living at the time of their mother's death in 1921 --- Clo O. (Mrs. Frederick) Schotte, of Chariton, Mary Fleming of Denver, Colorado, and Cora Walters, of Los Angeles. The Schottes, too, are buried on this lot.