Prince Greer

Prince Greer
and the
American Embalming Tradition
Thanks to the Johnson Family and Robert G. Mayer from Embalming History, Theory, and Practice for their information on Prince Greer and the Civil War Embalmers. In addition, I wish to thank the following individuals for their kind permission to utilize their research in this article: Rob Moore, Charlotte Foster and The Lizzie Bordon Society

Embalming is a means of artificially preserving a dead human body. It is one of humanities’ longest practiced arts but was not widely performed within the United States until after the Civil War. During the colonial period and in much of rural America in the 18th and 19th centuries, wives and daughters prepared the body for viewing by first cleansing the departed, later dressing the body then laying the corpse out in the parlor or on the deathbed surrounded by aromatic herbs. The family would sit with the body for several hours to insure that the deceased was truly dead and would not awaken. The practice was called the wake or the watching.
Later the care of the dead became the province of undertakers. Throughout the 18th and early into the 19th century, undertakers limited their efforts to ward off decomposition with the use of sprigs of lavender (laid out in lavender) along with heavily scented soap to retard the stench of advanced decomposition long enough to have a funeral. In the 19th century, undertakers often packed the body of the deceased with ice or placed it on a “cooling boards”. Patented cooling boards were concave, ice-filled boxes fitted over the torso and head. At their most rudimentary, the cooling board was a plank of wood drilled with holes then placed above a block of ice. Cooling boards remained in use in the American South until well into the 20th century.
Modern embalming was originally conceived by a French chemist, Jean Nicholas Gannal, who introduced a method of embalming bodies for anatomical study using the arterial system of the body and a concoction of chemicals that provided some form of preservation. He later used the same system to embalm bodies for funerals but added carmine for color and arsenic to further retard decomposition to his embalming solution. He authored the History of Embalming, the first textbook on embalming and his methods were used to in the City of Lights to preserve the abandoned corpses put on display in the infamous Paris morgue.
Although embalming was not widely used in preparing the dead, the concept caught the attention of enough practitioners that it was kept alive and practiced in Great Britain and France. There were however medically trained embalmers who worked in the United States with the English translation of Gannal’s textbook and various European embalming formulas and technique

During the Civil War, Thomas Holmes advanced the concept of arterial embalming and improved the preserving chemicals to the point where embalming could be employed on a wide scale at a reasonable cost. President Lincoln took an interest in embalming and directed the Quartermaster Corps to utilize preservation techniques that would allow the return of Union dead to their hometowns for proper burial. Holmes quickly realized the commercial potential of embalming and resigned his commission and began offering embalming to the public for $100. He approached the U.S. Government and obtained exclusive rights to embalm Union soldiers so they could be shipped home for burial in their home communities. Not one to miss an opportunity to make money, Holmes employed salesmen to canvas homes in both the North and the South to sell coupons for embalming to the families who had sons fighting in the war. As armies gathered for the typical huge Civil War battles, Holmes and his crew would set-up camp nearby overlooking the battlefield. At the conclusion of the battle his men would search the thousands of dead bodies for embalming coupons. Those found with the coupons would be carried to the nearby embalming tents for preparation and shipment back home to their families.

Holmes’s embalming method was crude and temporary. He would inject into an artery a solution of bi-chloride of mercury then place the embalmed body in a wooden box, sometimes lined with zinc. The name of the deceased soldier was written on the coffin lid along with the address of the unfortunate’s parents. Letters, papers and other personal effects were placed inside the coffin along side the remains.

By the end of the War, Holmes had embalmed over 4,000 soldiers and officers killed in battle in addition to other prominent military and civilian figures. Contrary to some articles,Holmes was not part of the team that embalmed President Lincoln and prepared the great man’s body for interment in Springfield, Illinois. At the time of Lincoln’s death, this testament made the rounds in the popular press of the day:

Three years ago, when little Willie Lincoln died, Doctors Brown and Alexander, the embalmers or injectors, prepared his body so handsomely that the President had it twice disinterred to look upon it. The same men, in the same way, have made perpetual these beloved lineaments. There is now no blood in the body; i t was drained by the jugular vein and sacredly preserved, and through a cutting on the inside of the thigh the empty blood vessels were charged with a chemical preparation which soon hardened to the consistence of stone. The long and bony body is now hard and stiff, so that beyond its present position it cannot be moved any more than the arms or legs of a statue... He lies in sleep, but it is the sleep of marble.

Holmes retired to Brooklyn, New York where he sold root beer and embalming supplies. According to Christine Quigley, author of A Corpse: a History and Mary Roach, author of Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Holmes shared his Brooklyn home with samples of his Civil War era handiwork. Embalmed bodies were stored in the closets, and preserved heads sat on tables in the parlor. Not all that surprisingly, Holmes eventually went insane (Robert Mayer wrote that Holmes became mentally unhinged after an accident) spending his final years in and out of institutions. Shortly before he died he is said to have requested not to be embalmed.

Civil War embalming aficionados estimate that approximately 100,000 Union soldiers who died on the battle field were embalmed by an army of embalming surgeons. Prominent embalmers of the Civil War include Dr. Holmes, William J. Bunnell, Charles Da Costa Brown, Joseph B. Alexander, Henry P. Cattell, Frank A. Hutton, Dr. Richard Burr, Daniel H. Prunk, C.B. Chamberlain, Dr. E.C. Lewis and W.P. Cornelius and Prince Greer, a character in The Boston Book of the Dead.

After the Civil War, undertakers were largely unorganized and lacked textbooks, instructors and schools of embalming; however a number of physicians or embalming surgeons realized the tremendous financial opportunity practicing the preservation art would bring them. There was little call for embalming cue to the combination of the poisonous effects that mercury solutions had upon the embalmers themselves and their ineffectiveness in producing an aesthetically pleasing preserved corpse. Arsenic solutions replaced mercurial ones and other embalming compounds of the 19th century used lead, zinc chloride blended with mercury chromate, creosote and alum suspended in alcohol. Other embalming techniques include cavity embalming which consisted of injecting large amounts of preservative solutions in to the chest and abdominal cavities through a wide-bore needle called a trocar. Such injections were often combined with moistening the face with a mixture of aluminum sulphate and mercury chloride. Traveling salesmen sold undertakers embalming chemicals and supplies and would often impart knowledge of the actual process. Cranial injections as the name implies, consisted of inserting a trocar into the skull through either the base of the neck, the corner of the eye, or up through the nostril. (Though German chemist, August Wilhelm von Hofman, discovered formaldehyde in 1867, the compound was not utilized in embalming until 1893 when F.D. Blum discovered its hardening action. Once injected into the blood vessels of a corpse, formaldehyde had the dual effect of disinfecting and preserving.)

Despite the rocky start, by the 1870’s, embalming parlors were opening up around the country. In 1876 more than 3,000 embalmers across the United States were using Professor Rhodes’ Electro Bal Embalming Fluid. Also by 1876, the trade even had its own publications, The Casket and The Sunnyside. In 1878, Dr. Auguste Renouard, a Louisiana native who migrated to Denver published The Undertaker’s Manual, the first embalming textbook published in the United States and in 1883, the Rochester School of Embalming opened its doors. The modern age of American embalming had began.

Prince Greer, America’s first African American Embalmer

The most interesting account of Civil War embalming surgeons is the strange and interesting story of Prince Greer. Prince Greer was the personal slave of a cavalry officer who was killed during battle. Prince took it upon himself to return the body of his former master to his estate and contacted Dr. W. P Cornelius, a successful undertaker from Nashville. Dr. Cornelius arranged to have the body of Greer’s master shipped back to his Texas home. Around the same time, Dr. Cornelius found himself in a dilemma for his assistant, a young surgeon named Dr. E. D. Lewis, who had been trained in the embalming arts by Dr. Holmes himself, decided that embalming the dead was not the occupation for him. Prince Greer had remained on the Cornelius’s premises and indicated he would do anything to secure his room and board. Dr. Cornelius taught Greer the embalming arts and wrote:

“Prince Greer appeared to enjoy embalming so much that he himself became an expert, kept on at work embalming during the balance of the war and was very successful at it. It was but a short time before he could raise an artery as quickly as anyone. He was always careful, always of course coming to me in a difficult case. He remained with me until I quite the business in 1871."

Prince Greer was the first documented black embalmer in U.S. history.