"A relative ran into the woodshed after a saw, and began to deliberately saw off about eight inches of the dead man's legs."

Ordering the wrong size coffin is certainly a problem, but some geniuses in Milwaukee managed to make a bad situation worse when burying a very tall former Civil War soldier. An excerpt from a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story that was reprinted in the June 22, 1884 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Several farmers of Oak Creek, who brought produce to the south side yesterday brought intelligence of a strange burial, which occurred there last Friday. Horace Baldwin died last week of consumption and the funeral was set for Friday. He was a farmer residing on the division line of the towns of Oak Creek and Lake, owning some thirty acres of land, and was in comparatively good circumstances. When the civil war broke out he joined Company K, Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment, known as the Oak Creek Company, because so many natives of Oak Creek were in it. Although but twenty years of age, he was remarkably tall, his army description making him 6 feet 7 inches tall. When his comrades were wounded in the breast he would stop the bullets with his stomach. He was so conspicuously tall that he was given a sobriquet appropriate to his stature. He could not stand army life very well, and soon gave it up. The disease of which he died was contracted in the army. Friday, when the neighbors gathered at the farm house to do honor to his memory by following the remains to the grave, it was found that the coffin was made for a six-footer, and was therefore seven inches too short. The corpse could not be squeezed into the casket, and so, rather than disappoint the people waiting outside, a relative ran into the woodshed after a saw, and began to deliberately saw off about eight inches of the dead man’s legs. He thought the corpse moved and fainted. Thereupon another relative seized the woodsaw and completed the shortening process. The several members were bent back, the coffin lid fastened, and the funeral cortege wended its way to the Oak Creek Cemetery. The story has created a great sensation in Oak Creek, where the act is generally condemned, and a mobbing party was talked of. Luke Scanlan, supervisor from the town, says the story is true. Supervisor Kuenzil also vouches for the truth of the story. He says he has it from a source of undoubted authority.”