Fossors History

In the lineage society community, there are organizations that allow us the opportunity to recognize our ancestors for their military service, place of birth or settlement, community and civil service, descent from royalty and nobility, kinship to national leaders, occupations, and numerous other options.  With all of these organizations, however, the primary focus is on the ancestor’s birth or activities during one’s life – be it time, location, descent – but very little focus is given to final arrangements.  In fact, until now, there has never been an organization that specifically focused on the necessary circumstance of departure from life.
 
The Descendants of Fossors was created to recognize those ancestors who assisted in the arrangements necessary to assist families in dealing with the loss of their loved ones – gravediggers, stone masons, morticians and funeral directors, juries of inquest, those who donated land for public cemeteries, cemetery sextons, shroud-makers, and so forth.  These individuals, then as now, performed a necessary role in every community, large or small.  And while it is true we are focusing on an occupation of the living, the purpose of the occupation is assisting the living with the deceased.  This makes the Society unique.
 
The word fossor derives from the Latin fodere, “to dig.”  In the early Christian church, a fossor (often a minor cleric) was a person employed as a gravedigger, and today that definition still stands.  In our modern organization, for the purpose of establishing membership, we recognize a fossor to be anyone, male or female, other than the clergy, who assisted in the process of laying a person to rest.  We do not recognize the clergy for our purpose solely because there are other lineage societies that specifically focus on that service.  A list of qualifying services appears elsewhere on this site, together with the time frame in which their service must have been rendered.