Beyond burials: A big day in Little Washington

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In a day unlike any in its history, thousands of people descended on the Southwestern Pennsylvania county seat of Washington on Dec. 6, 1876. Doctors, journalists and others witnessed the start of the modern cremation movement — the first use of a purpose-built crematory on U.S. soil.

“The scene enacted there will give the town a notoriety and a place in history now beyond the reach of any other city, town or hamlet in the United States,” the Daily Gazette reported.

It was the unlikely setting. It took nearly a century for cremation to catch on among more than a tiny percentage of Americans, and when it did, it was the more liberal coastal states that led the way, with Pennsylvania lagging behind.

But somebody had to get it started. Nineteenth century U.S. and European intellectuals had begun writing about how cremation was preferable to burial.

Washington physician Francis J. LeMoyne took it upon himself to build a tworoom, red-brick crematory on the outskirts of town.

LeMoyne, already in failing health, expected to be his own first customer. But a willing volunteer came forward first — an immigrant German baron, Joseph De Palm, who had dabbled in alternative spiritual movements and expressed a desire for cremation before his death in New York.

A friend, Henry Olcott, a pioneer in the mystical spiritual movement known as theosophy, arranged with LeMoyne to bring the body to Washington for the cremation and invited doctors, journalists and other witnesses.

“There were thousands of people who came to Washington on the day of the cremation,” said Clay Kilgore, executive director of the Washington County Historical Society, which is based in what was LeMoyne’s house in downtown Washington. “There were reporters from all over the world. It was a pretty big deal.”

While LeMoyne’s motivation was more hygienic than religious, he faced vehement opposition from local churches on religious grounds.

“They thought it was barbaric. They thought it was pagan,” said Mr. Kilgore.

Nevertheless, The Pittsburgh Commercial headline the next day referred to the procedure as “A Complete, a Scientific, a Civilized and a Christian Cremation.”

The crematory still stands to this day and is operated by the historical society.

The brick furnace was heated to an estimated 2,300 degrees for Baron De Palm. The baron’s body was covered with myrrh, frankincense and other spices associated with death and immortality, then placed in the crematory via a cast-iron hatch. The coke-fueled furnace was designed so that heat, not the flames themselves, reduced the corpse to ash and bone, according to the book “Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America,” by religion scholar Stephen Prothero.

The cremation took about two and a half hours.

In all, 42 cremations were done at the LeMoyne Crematory before it shut down in 1901.

The second user was a Cincinnati art teacher, Jane Pitnam. Vials containing some of her ash and bone, and that of Baron De Palm, are stored at the LeMoyne house.

The third to be cremated was LeMoyne himself, who died in 1879 at age 81. His remains are interred below a monument in front of the crematory, proclaiming him a “fearless advocate of the right.”

He earned that encomium. He had offered his house as an Underground Railroad stop for fugitive slaves from nearby Virginia. He founded a library, women’s school and later a school for freed slaves, and he funded faculty positions at what is now Washington and Jefferson College.

“He is called eccentric because he lives in advance of the people around him,” the Daily Gazette wrote of him the day after the De Palm cremation.

One of LeMoyne’s motives for promoting cremation — to prevent contamination — appears overstated. Poorly buried corpses of people who died of infectious diseases, which were common in LeMoyne’s time, could contaminate a nearby water supply, but there’s no general risk of contamination from those who die of trauma or noncontagious diseases, said James Fabisiak, professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health.

But another motive of Lemoyne, to simplify the funeral process, puts him ahead ofhis time — far ahead.

“This was a beginning, but like anything that involves change, it doesn't happen overnight,” Mr. Kilgore said.