Yes, there have been changes

The Topic Question was "How have mortuary rituals changed in America over the past 100 years?"

There have been changes since the early 1900's until present day. I never thought to much about any type of mortuary rituals as death is not usually a topic of conversation brought up. 
I have been looking at changes from the 20th to 21st century along this journey. 
I found lots of information about 19th century and prior centuries regarding death and from other places around the world, but it was harder than I thought to find information from the 20th and 21st century about death or mortuary rituals.
When I thought about this topic/assignment, I began to focus my research on the wake/viewing, embalming, the funeral and the burial aspects.


I have learned that the funeral business has become more commercialized in nature. Funerals are becoming more personalized in nature( there is no one size fits all approach) and our society has become more open to cremations than we were in the past. 
Essentially, funerals have become more 'pretty' than 'plain'.  

We have seen a change from funerals at the home of the deceased to the funeral at the Funeral Home.  We have seen a change from no embalming, to being embalmed at home, then being embalmed at the funeral home, or back to no embalming with the use of cremation or a green burial without the use of embalming. 
We have seen the funeral service performed at the funeral home instead of churches as many times the funeral is now becoming a non-religious services.  Individuals are no longer being buried on their family land/farm and are either buried in a cemetery or they have been cremated. We saw a shift from plain caskets/coffins to caskets that were more extravegant and made from different materials such as plastic or steel.Caskets started to become bigger, prettier, and customizable. An avid hunter could have a casket with lining to reflect his hobby and a veteran could have their military insignia embroidered into the lining of the inside of the casket. The possibilities are essentially endless.  Another casket evolution is the green/biodegradable caskets. Instead of plastic or metal being put into the ground, individuals can choose to be earth friendly by selecting a product that will not harm nature. 

We have also seen a change with the use of cremation. Instead of being put in a casket and buried in the ground, individuals are able to be cremated and turned into ash. Family members of the deceased can decide what to do with your ashes and spread them somewhere that was meaningful to the departed. Some individuals keep the ashes in a urn, scatter them somewhere, or turn the ashes into jewelry such as a diamond for a memento. Some choose to keep the cremated ashes on someone's fireplace mantle as a way to keep them close, but others have placed the ashes in the ground. 

Brief look at death in New Hampshire around the early 1900s

I I found an interesting article by Lynn Rainville from the University of Michigan. She mainly discusses late eighteenth and nineteenth century mortuary practices in Hanover New Hampshire but she does touch on some early 20th century aspects in the early 1900s.

She had divided her work into four different time periods that ranged from 1770-1809, 1810-1859, 1860-1889, and 1890-1920. The discussions about the date range of 1890-1920 was what I mainly focused on reading.  Living in Saint Louis my whole life, it was interesting to learn about a different area of the early 1900s.

Rainville provides this table within her article about information collected for individuals buried within 1770-1920. Although this goes back outside of the scope of the time frame I am focusing on, it is still interesting to see.
 

It is interesting that word choices have also evolved over time

In the early part of the 20th century, we begin to distance death from our day to day lives by utilizing hospitals for those sick and dying, the use of cremation becoming an alternative choice to the traditional funeral, and how the death of someone became more of a professional service industry. 

We saw a change of people dying at home to dying in hospitals then being turned over to the funeral director for embalming and to get the body ready for the funeral/wake. This did not only happen in New Hampshire, but all over the country. 

Rainville, L. (1999). Hanover deathscapes: Mortuary variability in New Hampshire, 1770-1920. Ethnohistory, 46(3), 541.