It was unbearable that a loved one might be buried by strangers, far from home. In 1844, when Almond Fisk’s brother William died in Mississippi, his family could not practically ship his body to the family plot near Lake Champlain in New York. Fisk’s father, a minister, was devastated—there was no way to know if his son had received last rites, or whether his body had been handled with care. No body to visit.

Fisk owned an iron foundry and understood the airtight cast-iron systems developed for steam travel—the very innovation that was causing more Americans to die far from home. He set to work creating a hermetically sealed coffin. One surgeon he consulted was an avid Egyptian mummy collector who may have inspired Fisk’s decision to fashion coffins after Egyptian sarcophagi. Cast in the realistic form of a shrouded body, the coffins featured a glass window at the head—in a time before photography, it was the only way to see the face and know the occupant was your person. The window is the casket’s most macabre feature: a face sealed behind glass, neither fully present nor altogether gone.

Fisk received a patent for his ‘metallic burial case’ in 1848, just in time for the California Gold Rush. The company provided caskets to many notable Americans, including Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie. Their use peaked during the Civil War, just before embalming would make the body itself transportable. For a brief moment, preservation was not chemical but mechanical.

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Links:

• A Brief History of Fisk’s Coffins - Scott Warnasch, American Mummies, February 27, 2019

  
  

• Interesting essay, cholera outbreaks and changing attitudes towards death: “Death, Burial and Iron Coffins” - Scott Warnasch, Secrets of the Dead (PBS), September 21, 2018

  
  

• Gone But Not Forgotten: Fisk Iron Coffins – Rachel Yerke-Osgood, The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, November 13, 2025

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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