I have written of numerous exhumations at Congressional Cemetery over the last few weeks, but all of them have been done with express permission of the powers that be. We today look at a case where this was, decidedly, not the case.
A. C. H. Webster, who seems to have gone only by his initials, was born in England in the early 1830s, married a woman from there, lived for a time in Maryland, where they had a son named William, before moving to D.C. around the end of the Civil War.
Webster was a ‘claim agent,’ which is described in an ad for his services as offering “Prosecution and Collection of Claims against the United States and the Settlement of Officer’s Official Accounts.” He also sold insurance, which seems a pretty good fit to his other services. However, as a sideline, he also manufactured picture frames, and did engraving.
But, in general, he lived a quiet life. He appears in the news only when buying or selling property. Once again, this would change after his death. He died on October 28, 1873 in his early 40s. As was the norm for businessmen in that era, he was a member of a lodge, It was they that took on the funeral, primarily the Washington Centennial Lodge No. 14 (today the Washington Daylight Lodge No. 14). The “Washington Chapter of Masons” was involved.
Also at the funeral, along with the family and friends, was a man who wrote in his diary that evening:
Attended a funeral at Congressional cemetery to-day, and brought the subject into Georgetown College to-night. Called to see M. Today and found her to be doing well.
M. was most likely Maud Brown. She and her brother or husband Percy Brown were aomng the most infamous resurrectionists in Washington. The diarist himself was George A. Christian, and the 1992 book Body Snatching: The Robbing of Graves for the Education of Physicians in Early Nineteenth Century America by Suzanne M. Schultz describes him as follows:
George Christian, a government clerk employed in the Surgeon General’s Office in Washington, D.C., ran a little grave robbing and shipping business on the side. He and four others … maintained a small shack which served as a holding room for shrouds, clothing, and other items secured from graveyards. The bodies were injected and packed in whiskey barrels, rolled to the Army Medical Museum, and shipped from there. Christian personally oversaw the shipment at the museum, for each body brought between $40 and $100, depending upon the demand.
More on Webster’s adventures after his death next week.