Joseph
Lincoln – Westerville’s Gravedigger
by Alan Borer
In the 19th century, every town needed a
gravedigger. Their proper word is
“sexton.” But the term is just a
disguise for a job that could be very unpleasant. We live in a culture that, until relatively
recently, practiced “inhumation,” or burial in the earth. That was the preferred method of disposing of
the dead until 2015, when cremation outstripped earth burial in popularity.[i] Modern cremation requires technology
unavailable 150 years ago. Burial was
both feasible and inexpensive; cremation was taboo in many traditions and the
choice of gravedigger often fell to the lowest class of society.
In Harold Hancock’s book Nineteenth Century Westerville, we read the following quote in the
section on the Otterbein Cemetery Association:
The
first regularly paid employee was a man with the last name of Lincoln (black),
who as ‘janitor’ in 1879 was charged with visiting the cemetery once per day,
supervising the vault and digging the graves at the rate of $3 for adults and
$2 for children. (p. 41)
Finding
out the full name of the gravedigger appeared challenging, but was not actually
too difficult. Now that the vast
compilation of almost 250 years of the United States Census is computer
indexed, we can search for citizens by any one of a number of descriptors. There was only one African-American man in
Westerville in 1880 who fit Hancock’s quote, and that was Joseph Lincoln.
Joseph Lincoln was born in 1812 in Virginia, and likely
born a slave. Most of his life is a
blank. Percentages suggest that he would
have done fieldwork, although he could have been a house servant or
craftsman. We also have no idea when and
why he came to Ohio, although given his (probably adopted) last name, it would
have been during or after the Civil War.
We know he had a wife, Frances, who died in 1866. Frances Lincoln is buried in Otterbein
Cemetery, so the Lincolns must have called Westerville “home” by then. In 1870, he was living in Blendon Township,
where the census listed him as a “farm laborer.” He was unable to read or write, and was
listed as “mulatto,” or mixed race. He
lived in the household of Frank and Eliza Smith. Frank Smith worked in a sawmill, and Eliza appeared
to be Joseph Lincoln’s daughter.
In 1880, Joseph Lincoln lived right next door to Frank
Smith. Eliza ‘s job was now “hair work,”
and their son John found employment at the “tile works,” probably the Everal
works. Joseph, now listed simply as
“laborer,” sports the label of “father-in-law.” For unknown reasons, Joseph
Limcoln lived in a separate building with a seven-year-old girl named Fannie
Anderson, also black, and probably a relation.
It is unknown how Joseph Lincoln advanced from freed
slave to employee of the Cemetery Association, but a clue may be found in the
same census roll. Lincoln’s other
neighbor in both 1870 and 1880 was none other than Henry Garst, Otterbein
faculty member and future college president.
Garst may have been broad minded enough to help his black neighbor find
work at the cemetery. Garst had a black
servant, Millie Stafford, in 1880, and she may have acted as go-between.
Joseph Lincoln held the job of gravedigger about four
years. Although performing a job at the
lowest stratum of society, he was well thought of. A line in the October 27, 1883 issue of the Westerville Review read:
Joseph
Lincoln, a well known colored man, died last Monday, aged seventy-one
years. He was buried in Otterbein
Cemetery.
[Joseph Lincoln's marker, Otterbein Cemetery}
Lincoln was laid to rest in ground that he knew
well. I wish we knew more about this
man, born a slave and living in a time that considered him fit only for digging
graves and other kinds of shovel work.
Did he resent his treatment, or did he look at Westerville as a home far
superior to a Virginia slave quarters?
As historians, we can only speak from facts, and the facts just don’t
exist to answer the many questions we wish we could ask Joseph Lincoln.
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