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Trees Became Coffins
A Pilgrim settler, hewing logs to make his rude dwelling, and gazing at the virtually untouched forest that had yielded him the trees needed, must often have looked upon one or more of them as perhaps containing, as it were, the rude coffin in which one day he would be buried.
For in the early 1600’s, making coffins of boards was a difficult task. It was far easier and the custom at the time to make coffins from the trunks of large trees. A big tree would be felled, a section cut and hollowed; in this the body of the departed Pilgrim would be placed, and then each end was sealed with planking nailed to it.
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