Burial Care in the Early Days

Before mortuaries came out and picked up corpses, Robert Moroni Gale, an active member of the community, would pick up the deceased, lay out the dead, dress them, and prepare them for burial. The bodies were kept at homes until the funeral. He would pack them in ice, or have ice packs around them. He would sit up with the dead when no one else was available and he dug the graves in the cemetery for those that died. There were very few families in the town that he did not help and he never charged anyone for his service.