The Journals of Martha E. McMillan

embraced the notion of a God of love rather than a God of vengeance” (Graham 198). In addition to the increase in ceremony surrounding a person’s death, the Christian community evidenced this by the increase in Protestants who visited graves in the nineteenth century. In House and Home Papers , Harriet Beecher Stowe explains that Christians’ view of death should differ from that of the secular world; “If there is anything that ought to distinguish Christian families from Pagans, it should be their way of looking at and meeting those inevitable events that must from time to time break the family chain. It seems to be the peculiarity of Christianity to shed hope on such events” (Stowe 330). In Victorian America, Christians distinguished themselves by viewing death with hope and using mourning to unite the community. Grief scholar Dana Luciano writes about Protestant mourning, “Grief, effect and sign of a human nature that was to be respected, even venerated, for its capacity to form deep bonds to others, was additionally depicted as an element of a divine plan that, when read and engaged properly, would turn the subject (and, in some deployments, the nation) toward redemption” (Luciano 8). Nineteenth-century Protestants sentimentalized death along with the rest of society, but they also viewed mourning as an opportunity to bring the community together and refocus them toward redemption. Martha McMillan portrays the nineteenth-century Cedarville community as having a Protestant view of death. The McMillans and much of the Cedarville community was Presbyterian which is reflected in their treatment of Aunt Jane’s death. On September 29, 1898, Aunt Jane was badly burned by a “little fluid lamp” she had owned for years. Martha, James, and numerous family and community members cared for her night and day for six days until she passed away. The next day, the community hosted a funeral service for Aunt Jane in her parlor. The reverend gave a message, and several people read scripture and prayed. Afterward, the 150