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 assisted Joseph Lincoln in obtaining the post. 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.

            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. 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.  

Alan Borer

        
[i] Josh Sanburn, “Cremation Is Now Outpacing Traditional Burial in the U.S.,” Time Magazine, August 1, 2016.