Museum of Funeral Customs, Former death education museum in Springfield, US
The Museum of Funeral Customs was a collection dedicated to documenting American burial traditions and practices. The facility featured a fully recreated 1920s embalming room complete with period tools and equipment, along with coffin displays and authentic funeral artifacts spanning different eras of American history.
The museum was located in Springfield near Oak Ridge Cemetery and Abraham Lincoln's tomb, connecting it to significant American history. It displayed a scale model of Lincoln's funeral train and showcased presidential burial customs, linking local geography to a major figure in American tradition.
The collection displayed post-mortem photographs, mourning garments, and burial items that showed how American families grieved and marked loss from the 1800s onward. These objects revealed intimate details about the rituals and clothing people used to honor their dead.
The facility closed in 2009, and visitors interested in viewing these items can now visit the Kibbe Hancock Heritage Museum in Carthage, Illinois, where the entire collection was relocated in 2011. This nearby location preserves all the displays and allows continued access to the original artifacts.
The museum stood out for its unusual merchandise selection, including horse-drawn hearse models and casket replicas of notable historical figures. Visitors could also purchase coffin-shaped souvenirs in the gift shop, a distinctive detail that set this collection apart from typical history museums.
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