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Is it me, or is this item a little bit ghoulish? "Body of Miss Farmer Reduced to Ashes at Noon". Sort of a startling image.
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Savannah Woman Is Cremated Here
Body of Miss Farmer Reduced to Ashes at Noon
The body of Miss Ruth Constance Farmer, 49, of Savannah, arrived here by express this morning and was taken to a local mortuary to be cremated at noon.
The certificate of death accompanying the body showed that she died of heart trouble at the Central of Georgia hospital in Savannah.
The body was unaccompanied and there will be no member of the family present to witness the cremation, it was said.
The ashes will be placed in an urn tomorrow morning and sent back to relatives in Savannah.
Hart's Mortuary in Macon is the only one in Georgia equipped to cremate bodies.
Body of Miss Farmer Reduced to Ashes at Noon
The body of Miss Ruth Constance Farmer, 49, of Savannah, arrived here by express this morning and was taken to a local mortuary to be cremated at noon.
The certificate of death accompanying the body showed that she died of heart trouble at the Central of Georgia hospital in Savannah.
The body was unaccompanied and there will be no member of the family present to witness the cremation, it was said.
The ashes will be placed in an urn tomorrow morning and sent back to relatives in Savannah.
Hart's Mortuary in Macon is the only one in Georgia equipped to cremate bodies.
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1.
We have the very nice obituary for Ruth that the family kept: This, on the other hand, is something that the family may never even have seen, but it gives some useful information. I still would like to know more because I always want to know more, but this is as much as I'm likely to get, and more than I ever expected, given that Ruth was a fervent Christian Scientist.
2.
The certificate of death accompanying the body showed that she died of heart trouble at the Central of Georgia hospital in Savannah.
Heart trouble seemed rather generic to me, until I started thinking about some (relatively) recent mentions in letters of Ruth being ill and in need of rest. The fact that she died in a hospital really surprised me. What was a Christian Scientist doing in a hospital? I googled the Central of Georgia hospital and I found the Central of Georgia Railway Society's website: Although no longer a part of Central’s holdings, the railway’s hospital is an important milestone in its history. Built in an era when a private hospital was the accepted method of railroads to provide all employees with hospital benefits, the 80-bed hospital was opened July 1, 1927.
So Ruth was in a place meant for railroad employees, although she wasn't a railroad employee: rather, she taught at the Pape School in Savannah. My hypothesis is that she collapsed in the July Savannah heat in public - maybe on public transportation, maybe on the way to work - and was taken, unconscious, to the railroad employees hospital, where she died, at 10:45 in the morning (according to another notice somewhere). Maybe she regained consciousness before she died, maybe not. And maybe that wasn't what happened at all.
3.
Hart's Mortuary in Macon is the only one in Georgia equipped to cremate bodies.
Hart's Mortuary and Cremation Center in Macon, Georgia was founded in 1899. It still exists, and has a website. It sounds as though the family went to some trouble to have Ruth cremated. None of the other members of the family appear to have been cremated, so it sounds as though Ruth expressed a wish before she died to be cremated - which is interesting and unexpected.
Additional note on cremation: When Anne Starr died in Miami in 1928, they sent her body to Orlando for cremation. I daresay there was only one crematory in Florida as well.
We have the very nice obituary for Ruth that the family kept: This, on the other hand, is something that the family may never even have seen, but it gives some useful information. I still would like to know more because I always want to know more, but this is as much as I'm likely to get, and more than I ever expected, given that Ruth was a fervent Christian Scientist.
2.
The certificate of death accompanying the body showed that she died of heart trouble at the Central of Georgia hospital in Savannah.
Heart trouble seemed rather generic to me, until I started thinking about some (relatively) recent mentions in letters of Ruth being ill and in need of rest. The fact that she died in a hospital really surprised me. What was a Christian Scientist doing in a hospital? I googled the Central of Georgia hospital and I found the Central of Georgia Railway Society's website: Although no longer a part of Central’s holdings, the railway’s hospital is an important milestone in its history. Built in an era when a private hospital was the accepted method of railroads to provide all employees with hospital benefits, the 80-bed hospital was opened July 1, 1927.
So Ruth was in a place meant for railroad employees, although she wasn't a railroad employee: rather, she taught at the Pape School in Savannah. My hypothesis is that she collapsed in the July Savannah heat in public - maybe on public transportation, maybe on the way to work - and was taken, unconscious, to the railroad employees hospital, where she died, at 10:45 in the morning (according to another notice somewhere). Maybe she regained consciousness before she died, maybe not. And maybe that wasn't what happened at all.
3.
Hart's Mortuary in Macon is the only one in Georgia equipped to cremate bodies.
Hart's Mortuary and Cremation Center in Macon, Georgia was founded in 1899. It still exists, and has a website. It sounds as though the family went to some trouble to have Ruth cremated. None of the other members of the family appear to have been cremated, so it sounds as though Ruth expressed a wish before she died to be cremated - which is interesting and unexpected.
Additional note on cremation: When Anne Starr died in Miami in 1928, they sent her body to Orlando for cremation. I daresay there was only one crematory in Florida as well.
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