Hearthside House Museum in Lincoln is draping its mantels and mirrors in black for Gone But Not Forgotten, a 90-minute guided tour of Victorian death and mourning customs that opens Oct. 18 and runs through Nov. 1. Volunteers dressed in black mourning attire will lead small groups through all three floors of the historic Great Road home, ending the experience with a staged wake in the formal parlor complete with a coffin and memorial cards.
According to The Valley Breeze, the exhibit explores the traditions families practiced after losing a loved one in the late 19th century, and the house itself becomes part of the story: purple and black bunting hangs on the exterior while black draping covers the mirrors and mantels inside. The tour centers on Simon E. Thornton, the home's former owner. The Valley Breeze reports that Thornton lived and died at Hearthside in 1873, though other accounts of the exhibit vary in their certainty — The History List states he died there that year, while an official Hearthside listing hedges that he may have died at the house in 1873.
Hair Jewelry, Embalming Tools and a Dead Man's Undertaker Records
Visitors will see Victorian mourning dresses, bonnets and accessories alongside hair jewelry crafted from the hair of the deceased, including pins, earrings, rings and necklaces, per the same Valley Breeze account. The exhibit also includes antique embalming tools — a practice that became popular after the Civil War — plus Thornton's own undertaker's death records and the table on which he was embalmed. The History List separately describes artifacts such as an antique wicker coffin and a child's coffin among the pieces featured in the broader exhibit.
Hearthside has also drawn from a private collection for this presentation: the Talbot family kept its own mourning artifacts, including letters written on mourning stationery and mourning jewelry that was later donated to the museum, the article notes. That donated jewelry joins what greatroadheritagecampus.org describes as Hearthside's significant collection of Victorian mourning attire, built in part from Victorian and Edwardian dresses, blouses, children's clothing, hats, gloves and undergarments donated to the museum over the years.
A Memoriam Card and a Biscuit Sealed in Black Wax
Every guest who completes the tour receives a memoriam card and a wrapped funeral biscuit, tied with a black ribbon and sealed with black wax, the Breeze reports. The parlor wake that closes the tour includes a coffin and memorial cards, reconstructing the kind of domestic mourning ritual families once staged in their own homes.
Those broader customs get fuller treatment in the museum's accompanying displays, which according to The History List cover mourning etiquette and fashions, grave dolls, cemeteries and memorials, Victorian superstitions about the afterlife, and the undertaker and embalming process. Rhode Island Monthly adds that grieving Victorian families sometimes turned to séances and mediums in hopes of reconnecting with the dead, and that covering mirrors in black was believed to help ensure the deceased's journey went smoothly — a belief echoed in the black draping now hanging throughout Hearthside.
Tour Times, Dates and Who Should Book
Gone But Not Forgotten runs on four dates — Oct. 18, Oct. 24, Oct. 25 and Nov. 1 — with timed entry every half hour from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. and a last booking at 2:30 p.m., per the Breeze's reporting. An evening tour is also offered Oct. 24, running from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. with a final entry at 6 p.m. Advance ticket purchase is required, with reservations available through hearthsidehouse.org.
The museum recommends the tour for guests age 12 and older, and notes that participants must be able to climb stairs and stand for periods of time given the house's three-floor layout. Hearthside House Museum sits at 677 Great Road in Lincoln, Rhode Island, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, operating under the stewardship of the all-volunteer nonprofit Friends of Hearthside, per Great Road Heritage Campus. Rhode Island Monthly reports that the mourning-themed tours lead into a separate “History of the Paranormal” traveling exhibit featuring Brian Cano, scheduled at Hearthside from Nov. 12 to 14.
