Things American Presidents Were Buried With

Of all the presidents, the items that John F. Kennedy took to the grave with him seem to be the most well-documented. This might simply be because his death was so tragic and unexpected, with the country plunged into unimaginable grief after the tragedy, that every part of the young president's funeral was newsworthy.

It would remain so long after he'd actually been laid to rest, as well. In a 1996 interview (via The Seattle Times), Joe Hagan, the mortician who was in charge of JFK's body after its journey from Dallas, autopsy, and embalming, said he got asked about funeral details all the time – unfortunately, often by conspiracy theorists. But while he couldn't help them out by offering up any weird details, he did know exactly what the president was buried with.

According to Hagan, the Catholic JFK was buried with a rosary and three letters from family members. He was also wearing gold cufflinks, as well as a PT-109 tie clip – that being the small boat he was on that sank during an encounter with the Japanese in 1943. But the most notable item was slipped into JFK's mahogany casket by his widow, Jackie: a piece of scrimshaw. Also connected to his time in the Navy, as scrimshaw was originally art created by men on whaling ships made to pass the time, per Boston Magazine, JKF had his own collection of the intricately carved bones. His favorite, the one he took to his grave, bore an etching of the presidential seal and had been a Christmas gift from his wife the year before.

So many aspects of Abraham Lincoln's funeral were abnormal. For one, he technically had about a dozen funerals, as The Washington Post explains, because as his body traveled by train from Washington, D.C. to Illinois, it was removed at various stops to allow hundreds of thousands of people to pay their respects. He was also embalmed, something that had only become slightly more common a few years before. In fact, it was all those people seeing his embalmed corpse that skyrocketed the procedure in popularity.

Lincoln was buried in a suit with some significance: He'd also worn it when he was sworn in as president for the second time just weeks before he was assassinated. Given the monumental time in which he lived and led the country, there are any number of items that could have gone to the grave with Lincoln that would have made sense. But given an infinite number of guesses, you would still never land on what actually did, the story is that bizarre.

At the time, the New York Herald reported that Captain Parker Snow, who had gone searching for the lost Franklin Expedition in the Arctic (guided by psychic visions), offered those in charge of Lincoln's funeral items he had believed to be from the doomed men (pictured), including a page from a Prayer Book and bits of uniform. According to a blog post by Russell Potter, an expert on the Franklin Expedition and editor of a book of the expedition's letters, it's not clear why in the world anyone would have agreed to bury them with Lincoln, but according to reports, those in charge did so.

John Tyler is one of those one-term presidents from shortly before the Civil War whose names kind of get lost in the shuffle of the layman's limited presidential memory bank. In a 2019 book ranking the first 43 presidents, historians listed him as the fifth worst one. But for one reason, John Tyler should be much, much more well-known: He was the only U.S. president to die and be buried in the Confederacy.

According to the National Portrait Gallery's publication "America's Presidents," once he wasn't in charge of the country anymore, Tyler, a Virginia native, openly supported splitting it up. Then, when the South seceded, he served in the Confederate House of Representatives. Or rather, he was elected to serve but died before he could take his seat, as "The Presidents Fact Book" explains.

Having a former U.S. president who not only sided with their cause but chose to live and die in the South was a coup within a rebellion that the Confederate government was quick to take advantage of, according to "Embattled Capital: A Guide to Richmond During the Civil War." His funeral was a major event there, while at the same time virtually ignored by the North, who now considered Tyler a traitor. "Last Rites: The Evolution of the American Funeral" explains that in those days, the richest and most important people often covered their coffins in cloth. Lincoln's, for example, would be completely covered in black broadcloth before burial only a few years later. Tyler's coffin was also covered in cloth, a choice that would tie him to the traitorous rebellion forever: He was buried with his coffin wrapped in a Confederate flag.

If a president wants to go into the ground in a style more in keeping with their status as the former leader of the Free World, and money is no object, there is just one company they turn to: The Marsellus Casket Company of Syracuse, New York.

Or at least, they could have for 131 years, up until the company closed down in 2003, as The New York Times reported at the time. Still, there were plenty of U.S. presidents who died during that period, and lots of them opted for a coffin from the storied company. In fact, according to the Casket and Funeral Supply Association of America, Marsellus even had a coffin model M710 known as the "President Mahogany." It's no surprise then that presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as well as their first ladies Jackie Kennedy and Pat Nixon, were buried in this model. (Other politicians, including two senators and a vice president, chose it as well, along with a who's-who of famous and/or rich people.)

Harry S. Truman was buried in a slight variation, the M720 Mahogany, while Ronald Reagan selected the M700 Masterpiece Mahogany (pictured). Their wives, Bess and Nancy, were similarly buried in the same caskets as their husbands. As you can see, these are no plain boxes, but pieces of art that then get put in the ground forever. And very expensive pieces of art, at that, as even before any modifications needed for a presidential coffin, they retail in the $20,000-40,000 range.

Okay, yes, fine. If it's a bit of a stretch to call an animal a "thing," then calling an actual human woman that is really unacceptable. But it's a story worth telling, since President Ulysses S. Grant's insistence on being buried with his wife completely changed his gravesite plans and would result in the construction of an iconic New York landmark.

Being buried with one's spouse is not a strange request in the slightest, and that includes the men who have been president of the U.S. Most presidents, it seems, have been buried with or next to their wives. But Julia Grant was not welcome at the location the former president originally wanted, West Point (per The New York Daily News). The problem was, the former first lady didn't fit the criteria for burial at the military academy, and, for some reason, they weren't willing to bend the rules for the former president and undisputed victor of the Civil War. But Ulysses wanted to spend eternity next to his very beloved wife more than he wanted to be buried at a place that meant so much to him, so West Point was out.

In the end, a plot of land in New York City was selected and a massive mausoleum was eventually built there, which is to this day the largest one in North America, according to Erenow. The former president had to wait quite a while for his wife to join him, though, as she outlived him by 17 years. However, she was eventually laid to rest beside him in Grant's Tomb.