Church.

While funerals in seventeenth-century Virginia were solemn occasions,
there was an inescapable social aspect to the gatherings of family and
friends, who assembled from the countryside, both to comfort the
bereaved and attend the departed on his last journey. When a planter or
a member of his family died, messengers were sent out at once by sloop
or shallop up and down the rivers or later, overland, on horseback. If
the family bore arms, the hatchment, emblazoned with this emblem, was
hung upon the door. Incidentally, the only known hatchment, that has
survived in Virginia, is in possession of the Carter family at "Shirley"
in Charles City County.

At once, preparations were begun to accommodate the relatives and
friends who were sure to assemble for the last rites. Coming from a
distance, they would be hungry upon arrival, and not only was a great
amount of food prepared but the cellar was explored for its contents of
drink, which the company expected to be brought forth. Occasionally, a
man, in making his will, directed what should be spent for the "funeral
meats" and drink, although Edmund Watts of York County, in 1675, forbade
the serving of drinks at his funeral.

At the final rites for John Smalcomb in 1645, the company consumed a
steer and a barrel of strong beer, the cost of which amounted to 960
pounds of tobacco, while the coffin cost only 250 pounds. The gathering
assembled in 1678, for the funeral of Mrs. Elizabeth (Worsham) Epes,
widow successively of William Worsham and Francis Epes of Henrico
County, consumed a steer, three sheep, five gallons of wine, two gallons
of brandy, ten pounds of butter and eight pounds of sugar.

The firing of guns was accepted as a regular feature of a funeral, and
at the Smalcomb rites the powder spent amounted to twenty-four pounds of
tobacco. In order to curb the waste of ammunition at entertainments, the
Assembly, in 1655, passed an act forbidding its use on occasions except
at "marriages and funerals."

In addition to expenditures as aforesaid and for the coffin, the latter
usually made by some local carpenter, there were costs for notifying
the countryside, costs for mourning bands, sitting up with the corpse,
and the fee for the funeral sermon. If burial was in the churchyard,
there was the cost of digging and filling the grave. The cost of a
winding sheet of Holland (coarse unbleached linen), in 1652, was 100
pounds of tobacco. The cost of the funeral ser