By Stephen Hammock, Archaeologist & Historian
A Milledgeville, Georgia legend for at least 50 years was the one regarding what happened in the Fish Vault in Memory Hill Cemetery. It probably started as a fad with local teenagers sometime after World War II. Anyone walking by the Fish family's deteriorating antebellum brick vault was supposed to knock on the marble door and ask aloud - "What are you doing in there, Mr. Fish?" No response was apparently ever heard. But the answer was that Mr. Fish was supposed to be committing suicide with his shotgun while sitting in a rocking chair beside his dead wife's coffin. A macabre tale of a distraught husband romantically ending his life locked inside the family crypt.
The Archaeology of the Fish Vault
This myth proliferated until the Friends of Baldwin County Cemeteries, Inc. had a preservation assessment of the entire cemetery made, and determined to bring in a brick mason to restore the crumbling vault. This assessment also noted that the Fish Vault was clearly inspired by those in Savannah's Colonial Cemetery. By the year 2008, it was in extremely bad condition: the front and corner had been damaged over the years by automobile impacts, the roof appeared to be leaking badly, and the marble door had been cracked when it was broken open by vandals. So the city had bricked up over the door. But two of the organization's leaders, Sue & Hugh Harrington, soon found out that there were restoration complications. They would need to contact descendants for permission, get a city permit, and bring in an archaeologist to be on hand in case any human remains were encountered. None were expected to be found, so it was really more of a formality than anything.
I was the archaeologist who answered their call. When I drove into the cemetery that early September day, they had just opened the vault door - though no one had gone inside - and there was a flurry of excitement amongst the people I saw. And before I could even park, I was being told that the crypt was full of bones! Did I mention that it was an incredibly hot, muggy, and rainy afternoon? This would play its part over the next several hours. I hurriedly greeted the Harringtons and the Fish family descendants who had gathered, grabbing my backpack with trowel, gloves, tape measure, camera, and other tools. Then I slowly stepped across the threshold and descended to the Dead.
There was a slight step just inside the doorway, then two brick steps, and then another down to the floor of the vault, which was partly subterranean. Looking around, I could see three long, low stone ledges or benches around the side and rear walls. These appeared at first glance to support three burials, but a closer inspection revealed that one set of adult remains was intermixed with the bones of several small children. It was not clear if this had been done by vandals, or by the collapse of stacked wooden coffins over time. It did seem, however, that they had been purposefully disturbed.
After conferring with the Friends, the Fish family, and Larry Glover of Williams Funeral Home, it was quickly decided that everything would be removed from the crypt that afternoon before darkness overtook us. Then it would be taken to the funeral home for safekeeping while the brick mason completed his task. The bones from Burial 1, including what looked like pieces of charcoal, some buttons, and remnants of its wooden coffin, would be transferred to a body bag, and the bones and material from Burials 2a, 2b, 2c, & 2d, which could not be separated quickly, would be transferred to another. Interestingly, there would be no need for a body bag for Burial 3.
Looking to my right, I stared at the strangest casket I had ever seen. It appeared to be a very old one made of cast iron, and was 6'3" in length. Rusty now, with evidence of recent water leakage around its bottom, its design somewhat resembled the shape of a shrouded figure. I could see the leak was coming from the roof directly above this odd casket, and wondered if its contents had been damaged in any way.
I began by photographing everything in situ, and taking measurements of the entire vault and its contents. Then I began gathering the bones and other material on the first two ledges into boxes that would be emptied into their respective body bags, sweeping even the tiniest particles up. I passed these boxes through the vault door to the waiting undertaker, who sighed and began preparing the remains for transport.
Meanwhile, back inside the crypt, it was getting almost too hot and humid to continue. I had to take several water breaks to keep hydrated, and the sun was moving lower down the western sky every minute. When we tried to move the iron casket outside, we found that it was incredibly heavy, weighing at least a couple hundred pounds. I was also concerned that the bottom might have rusted through, so we had 2 x 4 boards at the ready on which to set it down. But the iron casket was solid. I was sure we'd all have back problems for the rest of our lives, but we finally got it out through the narrow door.
I finally completed the removal of all the vault's contents not long before dusk. Once everything was packed into a van and driven away to the funeral home, I drove away with all kinds of questions in my mind about the afternoon's events. Who were all the people buried in the vault? Where was the legendary rocking chair? And most important of all, what was the story of that weird iron coffin, and who was buried in it?
So many questions. And as many as possible had to be answered before the brick mason finished his task, while the Friends were organizing a second funeral for the Fish family members we had encountered inside the crumbling vault. There was no time to lose. Hugh, Sue, and I planned to meet again a few days later at the funeral home with Osteologist Matt Williamson, an expert on human bones. I would examine the artifacts we had found - primarily several buttons off of the clothes in which the dead were buried - while he would examine the bones themselves. In fact, Matt made a quick examination of the remains before we met again a few days later.
When we all met up at Milledgeville's Williams Funeral Home, we screened the material from the body bags through 1/4" hardware cloth. Matt recovered any teeth, bone fragments, and osteological material to return with the larger bones to his laboratory for further examination, and I kept the wooden coffin nails, buttons, charcoal, and other archaeological material to take to my lab for analysis and identification.
This is what that analysis turned up. There were 202 countable Type B cut nails of various sizes with heads still on them from Burials 1, 2, and 3. Most of these were fasteners that held the supposed five wooden coffins together. There were other nails still embedded in remnants of coffin wood, and numerous other nail fragments. The fact that there were nails on the ledge around the iron coffin indicates that it was placed back inside the wooden case it came in before its occupant was interred.
I had also saved just a small sample (54.1 grams) of the charcoal that had been mixed with Burial 1, and a smaller sample (4.3 grams) from Burial 2. At first this was quite a mystery. But with a little research, we discovered that before embalming became common, charcoal was often packed around the body or put into the viscera of corpses to cover the stench of death's decay if there was going to be a delay in burial.
There were also 7 buttons recovered. These were all that was left from the clothing associated with Burials 1 and 2. I recovered four Prosser (or China) dish-type buttons from Burial 1. These were first patented in England in 1840, and revolutionized the button industry by making clothes fasteners cheaper and more widely available via the mass market. The French soon monopolized this industry in Europe, followed by the Americans throughout the Americas.
But only the more traditional bone buttons, which were made from animal bones, were found with Burial 2. It is presumed that the larger two buttons came from 2a, the adult male burial, while the smaller one could have come from either 2a or 2b. It may be a shirt button, which might rule out 2c and 2d, who were babies.
This is a good place to discuss the osteological results determined by Osteologist Matt Williamson, whose findings are summarized below. Burial 1 was determined to be a Caucasian male who was 35-50 years old at time of death, and whose height could not be determined as only about 40% of the skeleton was present. Some dried adipocere was identified on some of the bones, indicating that the corpse came in contact with water not long after burial. Three of the remaining teeth had caries (cavities), and four other teeth had been lost before death. There was also some indication of spinal degeneration. At the time of reburial it was theorized that Burial 1 may have been William Washington Fish (1800-1843), the patriarch of the Fish family. However, since Prosser buttons were only patented in the United States in 1841, it is somewhat to be doubted that they were being produced in large enough numbers to be found with a Middle Georgian who died in 1843.
Burial 2 is more complicated, since it included four sets of human remains that may have been purposefully disturbed by vandals. Burial 2a was determined to be a Caucasian male who was 40-55 years old at time of death, and who was about 5'9'' in height. Approximately 60% of this skeleton was present. There were dental caries on five teeth, and four other teeth had been lost before death. In fact - because his right maxillary second molar's occlusal surface was found to be "cupped and slanted in the mesial to distal direction" - he may have been a pipe smoker. Could these actually be the remains of William Fish? Either way, there was no indication of a gun shot wound to the skeletal remains, and neither were any rocking chair remnants found in the vault. MYTH BUSTED ONCE.
Burial 2b was that of a child between 5 and 9 years old, and of indeterminate sex, ancestry, or height. Only about 25% of this skeleton was present, preventing any further conclusions being made. It is thought that this burial was that of Horace Virgil Fish (1840-1845), who reportedly died of typhus two years after his father's death.
Only about 11% of Burial 2c remained, so sex, ancestry, and height were not determinable for this child between 1 and 2 years old. Burial 2d was that of a 3-month to 9-month old baby. As only the lower jawbone was recovered, the sex, ancestry, and height of this infant were also impossible to determine.
Burial 3, the one enclosed inside the 6'3" Fisk Metallic Burial Case, was probably that of Sarah Harvard Fish (1804-1856). As the family did not give permission to open this mummiform casket, we merely removed the metal face plate covering the glass viewing portal, and looked inside. Although it was difficult to see much even after cleaning the glass, we did see what appeared to be the remains of an adult. Some hair was still present, but there did not appear to be much soft tissue remaining. I also thought I saw the remnants of a striped dress further down. By the way, Sarah died 13 years after her husband, William, so there is no way he could have killed himself inside the vault after her death. MYTH BUSTED TWICE.
Fisk Metallic Burial Cases
The first glimpse I had of the iron casket in the Fish Vault triggered a memory from a visit to Franklin, Tennessee over a decade before. There at the Carter House, which was the epicenter of the bloody Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864, an iron casket on was on display. I also recalled from his book that this was one of the few times that the famous Forensic Anthropologist Bill Bass had been wrong in his assessment of a corpse's death date. Graverobbers had broken into a grave at an old plantation in 1977, and an amazingly well-preserved body had been found, which Bass initially thought was only a few months old. He later realized that the gunshot wound to the skull had occurred during the Battle of Nashville on December 16, 1864, and that the body had been preserved so well for 113 years because it had been embalmed with arsenic and buried in an air-tight, metal casket. Using that reference as a starting point, the research on this project began in earnest. These are the results.
Almond Dunbar Fisk (1818-1850) first patented these kinds of caskets in 1848, and they soon became all the rage for the "noblessly obliged." Politicians and celebrities like Dolly Madison, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster were all laid to rest in Fisk Metallic Burial Cases, which the company claimed were air-tight and would prevent decomposition without the aid of embalming. Although Fisk died only two years after his patent was approved, his partner Harvey Raymond's son William Raymond became the presiding officer by 1852, when Fisk and Raymond was renamed W. M. Raymond and Company. By this time the Fisk case was being mass-produced in Queens County, New York, and advertised all over the nation. This included Middle Georgia and even in Milledgeville itself, which was the antebellum state capitol until 1868. It seems that the price for these early mummiform Fisks decreased dramatically, too, and that they became more economical for the middle and not just the upper classes.
Though there may certainly be more, I am only aware of two other Fisk Metallic Burial Cases having been recovered and studied by archaeologists in Georgia. These were found prior to our 2008 discovery of the Fish Fisk: one in Burke County near South Carolina in 1983, and the other in McIntosh County along the Sapelo River in coastal Georgia in 2006. Memory Hill Cemetery's Fisk case was the third known at that time. I have not heard of others in the intervening years, but there are probably scores or even hundreds of Fisks yet to be studied in the Peach state.
As of 2023, these early Fisk mummiform caskets have been found in Georgia, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, and probably more states. The problem with the archaeological reports that would document such things is that they are rarely published and so never come to the attention of the public. This "grey literature" can easily be overlooked even by other archaeologists who are looking for it! There have also been mixed results in terms of whether or not these cases were actually air tight and capable of preserving human corpses indefinitely. In some cases, this has been proven over 100 years later to have been definitely true. In other cases, such as we have seen with Sarah Fish, if moisture or water have gained admittance to the casket, then the remains have been reduced to the skeletal state.
Summary & Conclusion
The brick mason found that the Fish Vault was in need of extensive repairs, as water had been entering from several parts of the roof for a great many years, and many of the antebellum bricks had cracked or were crumbling. The front was also separating from the vault after having been impacted by vehicles in the past. This required dismantling much of the vault and rebuilding it with new bricks.
Once the restoration was completed, the remains of all six Fish family members, along with all the artifacts associated with each burial, were reinterred on October 1, 2008. A brass name plate was included for the three burials that were interpreted as being William (Burial 1), Horace (Burial 2b), and Sarah Fish (Burial 3). As has been noted, I am here revising my opinion of Burial 1 being William Fish based on the fact that the Prosser buttons found mixed with the skeletal remains were only patented in the United States in 1841, and he died in 1843. Perhaps he had the latest and fanciest buttons in the United States, but it seems more likely that this was not William Fish. I suggest here that Burial 2a is more likely to be William, based on the buttons and also on how the children's coffins were deliberately placed atop that of 2a.
The last act of the drama was soon played. The Fish Vault Commemoration was held on November 8, 2008. Representatives of the Fish family, the Friends of Baldwin County Cemeteries, Inc., Williams Funeral Home, and a local minister were all on hand for the ceremony. Thus this brief project ended two months after the vault was first reopened. The Restoration of the Fish Vault was a good, necessary, and highly responsible endeavor of which all the preservationists involved may remain proud.
Acknowledgements
Looking back on 2008 from the vantage point of 2023, this was the project of a lifetime! Sue and Hugh Harrington solicited my help with this project, which we had no idea would be so interesting. Many thanks to them and the other members of the Friends of Baldwin County Cemeteries for this opportunity. Osteologist Matt Williamson analyzed the bones for age, sex, and condition, which allowed us to attempt to correlate them to known members of the Fish family. The Harringtons' and Matt's photos supplement my own in this article, so many thanks are due them for allowing this. Scott Warnasch kindly provided a copy of his recent article, which is by far the most important article on the iron casket industry to date. It literally revolutionizes and corrects many assumptions and errors that have been previously published. And MGPA Research Associate Ashley Quinn edited the artifact photos for publication, for which she deserves my hearty thanks.
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