In a word, yes. By the middle of the nineteenth century, nearly everyone
had a coffin of some sort. Undertakers, who often were also cabinetmakers
by training, would make coffins using hardware they would buy especially
for the purpose.  A separate genre of coffin hardware was developing about
that time.

Preservation depends entirely upon soil conditions, but exhumation is
always a job for the experts. You might find an intact wooden or cast-iron
coffin in good condition, fit to be lifted out, but that's highly unlikely.
More likely, the coffin and the remains inside will be in some state of
decay, ranging from a mere soil stain up to an apparently complete coffin
with little damage. In any case, it takes an experienced archaeologist to
recover old human remains, period.

While a mortician can remove a recent burial in a metal coffin, from a
burial vault, very few of them have the expertise to recover meaningful
remains from a deteriorated burial. In former times, undertakers would put
a symbolic shovelful of dirt in a coffin, recover the tombstone, and
proceed to the new burial site, leaving the actual remains in place. This
happened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore,
Maryland, where huge numbers of burials were found in allegedly "removed"
cemeteries. In all three cities, former burial grounds had been reclaimed
for other uses, many years ago. When recently the sites were being
redeveloped, hundreds, even thousands, of burials were found undisturbed
where the cemeteries had allegedly been removed from former churchyards.

The legal implications of disturbing a burial are different in each state,
but in any case it's no job to undertake without a lawyer and an
archaeologist on board.

At 7:23 PM 9/30/0, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>Greetings all
>   I have a few question regarding the burial of reasonably well-to-do people
>around the Roanoke, VA area in the mid 1850s.  Were coffins used at that
>time?  What kind of material was used?  Could the coffin itself survive for
>150 years?
>   Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.


               Ned Heite  ([log in to unmask])
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*   Compost happens                     *
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*   ... but it is beneficial only if    *
*   you pay close attention to the pile.*
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