Lazarus

Allhallowtide is a time to remember the dead — yesterday was All Hallows’ Eve, today is All Saints’ (Allerheil) and tomorrow is All Souls’ (Aller Seel). I’d like to remember someone who died almost 150 years ago, because his death perplexes me.

In October 1875, Pastor Oswin Frederick Waage entered the death of Daniel Scheid into the church record of Christ Lutheran Church in Trumbauersville, Bucks County. Daniel was only 20 years old and succumbed to tuberculosis — a disease that would claim one in seven Americans in that century. Normally, tuberculosis settles in the lungs and causes bloody coughs and fever, but Daniel’s infection had moved into his neck’s lymph nodes. He would have developed a large mass in his neck accompanied by blueish bumps on the skin.

The Scheid family had just mourned the death of its patriarch, Reuben, seven months earlier and mother Esther had to rely on her remaining younger children to survive: 17-year-old Charles found work in a shoe factory and 14-year-old William worked at a local foundry.

It’s so very tragic — and then there’s Pastor Waage’s comment next to Daniel’s death entry. “A Lazarus!” An allusion to the New Testament man who was brought back from death. I assume Daniel revived after death, or at least, after he was thought to be dead. What a curious notation in this old church record.