HAMLET - Last week, Gary Overcash of Rockingham’s Carter Funeral Home was named incoming chairman of the North Carolina Funeral Directors’ Association (NCFDA).
In the process of researching background information about the Association, interesting information was discovered in regard to the history and development of this body.
Editor’s note: The primary source for this information was Todd van Beck’s “A Brief History of the Early Beginnings of the North Carolina Funeral Directors’ Association.”
The first meeting of what would become the North Carolina Funeral Directors’ Association was held in Goldsboro on Tuesday, August 23, 1887. Representatives of eight funeral homes were present. They were: D. P. Haskitt & Son, Goldsboro; Moore and Robinson, Goldsboro; J. W. Woolvin & Son, Wilmington; Wooten & Stevens, Wilson; John W. Brown, Raleigh; L. C. Bagwell, Raleigh; G.B. Webb & Co., Kinston; and C.W. Jogner, LaGrange. Officers were appointed on a temporary basis to coordinate a subsequent statewide meeting.
The second meeting of the group was held in Raleigh two months later (October 19th). Fifteen funeral directors from across the state (six from the western counties and nine from the eastern areas) attended. Temporary officers were affirmed as J.W. Woolyin assumed the initial role of chairman with J.J. Robinson as secretary of the planning group.
A committee comprised of John W. Brown and two officers was established to develop a set of by-laws and a constitution for the organization. It was during this October meeting that official officers were elected to serve for the upcoming year. John W. Brown was selected as president, Frank H. Vogler of Winston-Salem became secretary, and John M. Barnes of Henderson was designated as the treasurer.
The group was formally renamed to become the North Carolina Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association. As the primary developer of the NCFDEA constitution and standards, John W. Brown is generally credited as the “founder” of the organization, but three others (i.e., Frank H. and A.B. Vogler of Winston-Salem, along with John M. Barnes of Henderson) were highly instrumental in the establishment of the Association.
A code of ethics for funeral directors was formulated in 1893 when Frank H. vogler submitted a set of guidelines that was immediately adopted by the Association.
However, all was not blissful for the new oversight body. Internal issues effectively precipitated a hiatus of two years, and it was April of 1900 before the Association reorganized. It was at this time that the NCFDEA entered into direct affiliation with the National Funeral Directors Association.
Although the North Carolina group numbered only twenty members at the time, it soon began to strongly influence the development of North Carolina state laws in regard to official recognition of the importance of the mortuary sciences. One such statute decreed that “No one not holding a license is allowed to use embalming fluid in any way.” Newspapers of the time reported such a standard to be “one of the best laws regulating the practice of embalming of any state in the Union.” The specific word “undertaker” first appeared in the NC statutes in 1893 when such professionals were exempted from jury duty. The North Carolina State Board of Embalming was established on July 1st of 1901, and by 1905 laws had been passed addressing even more specific standards and requirements for funeral homes, embalmers, and funeral directors.
The NCFDEA soon established its own school for the professional education and training of its members. Brown Funeral Home in Raleigh hosted the initial school session, with the classes being conducted by Professor Joseph Henry Clarke from the Cincinnati College of Embalming. That first effort consisted of a “semester” of only three weeks, cost $25 in tuition, and was offered only every three years, but many funeral directors/undertakers across the state took advantage of furthering their knowledge and skill in the art and science of embalming.
Persons of some notoriety in the mortuary field came to lecture at the school. Dr. Elihu Myers of the Champion Embalming Fluid Company was one such esteemed instructor, as was Professor Felix A. Sullivan (who had embalmed the remains of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1885).
Changes came during WWII when, in 1944, the North Carolina Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association consolidated with the North Carolina Burial Association to become the North Carolina Funeral Directors and Burial Association, Inc. Subsequently the somewhat cumbersome “Burial Association, Inc.” element was dropped to render the current official name of the North Carolina Funeral Directors Association.
