An Edgar Rivers Memory - Henry and Emma White

Yesterday I saw Edgar. Most of you know he is nearing 100 years old and has been a lifelong friend of our family. He is also connected to us through the Thurman connection (Dorothy Thurman Eddins). Long ago, he told me a story about the funerals of Henry Wiley and Emma Hudson White that bears retelling.

Emma died on January 11, 1918 and as a boy, Edgar remembers the driving snowstorm that was occurring when the horse-drawn hearse attempted to climb the hill between what is now Highway 9 and Pine Grove. He told me how his Dad and some other men used the spokes in the wheels of the hearse to turn the wheels and help the horses pull the hearse up the hill to the church and the cemetery.

Henry died on December 21, 1935. Edgar was a young man by then and he thought it was strange that the clouds began to gather on the day of the funeral. By the time the hearse, motorized by 1935, headed to Pine Grove, several inches of new snow were on the ground. This time, it was Edgar and some other young men who left their cars and pushed the hearse up the hill to the church.

My father remembered that the pallbearers carried the casket on foot from the church to the cemetery, and in the time that it took them to walk across the road, 2 or 3 inches of snow accumulated on the top of the casket.

Note: With Emma dying in 1918, I am curious if any of you have seen her death certificate? Was there a link to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic?