Tried to Raise the Dead

After the death of her millionaire husband, Mrs. Edward Carpenter, a Christian Scientist, refuses to have his body buried and instead attempts to resurrect him from the dead.

Asheville, N.C., May 20. -- After a week’s fight against the health authorities and the doctors and nurses who had watched her husband in his last hours, Mrs. Edward Carpenter whose husband was a millionaire, has at last had the body placed in a coffins and shipped to Savannah, her former home. The couple were Christian Scientists, and when Mr. Carpenter, who was brought here for his health died, his wife refused to believe he was dead or to allow the body to be buried. Day and night round the pall on which his body lay, Christian Science healers tried to resurrect the dead man. His widow became indignant when it was suggested that this body be encoffined, and it was only when the agent for one of the George Vanderbilt Biltmore villas, which the carpenters had rented, ordered her to move that Mrs. Carpenter left with her husband’s body.

“Tried to Raise the Dead,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed October 9, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/561.