FURNITURE AND HOME FURNISHINGS
kamp, Costigan, and Roll began using the Peter O’Shaughnessy home at 835 York St. after O’Shaughnessy’s death in the late 1920s, and the home remains a Muehlenkamp-Erschell venture; across the street is the Fares J. Radel funeral home. The Betz Funeral Home operated along E. Sixth St., and Pye and Erschell at Seventh and York Sts.; Frank Pye retired from the funeral business in 1892, and Fred Erschell moved to E. Sixth St. in Newport before relocating his business to Fort Thomas. Erschell’s son, also named Fred, continued in the business in Fort Thomas, while also serving as mayor. A. C. Dobbling & Son have funeral homes in Bellevue, Fort Thomas, and Alexandria. In Dayton, from the early 1930s through the late 1940s, there was the Tharp and Stith Funeral Home along Sixth Ave., later a Muehlenkamp operation; Muehlenkamp-Erschell also has an operation in Fort Thomas. In recent years, the family operating the Radel Home (Faris J. Radel) opened a new facility in Highland Heights on the site of a former A&W Root Beer stand, but it moved shortly to another new location farther south along U.S. 27, across from St. Joseph Catholic Church in Cold Spring. The short life of that venture in Highland Heights shows how difficult it is to open a new location that makes money, even for operators as well established and well known as the Radels. In the southern part of the county, there are Fares J. Radel in Alexandria, the Alexandria Funeral Home Inc. (Middendorf-Bullock, MuehlenkampErshcell) in Alexandria, Peoples Funeral Home on U.S. 27 in Alexandria, and the Cooper Funeral Home on U.S. 27 in Claryville. For many years, as long as the New Richmond ferry was in operation, the T. P. White Funeral Home of New Richmond, Ohio, handled much of southeastern Campbell Co.’s funeral business. It was much easier to cross into Ohio than make the trek to Newport. In Boone Co. there are five funeral establishments. Chambers & Grubbs operates along Dixie Highway in Florence and also on Main St. in Walton, the Stith Funeral Home (a descendant of the Tharp and Stith funeral home earlier in Dayton) in Florence and Hebron, the Linnemann in Burlington, and the Hamilton-Stanley Funeral Home in Verona; there is a branch of the MiddendorfBullock chain in Hebron. Bracken Co. has four funeral homes: in Augusta, the Metcalfe & Hennessey Funeral Home on E. Fourth St. and the Moore and Parker Funeral Home on Elizabeth St; in Brooksville, a branch of the Moore and Parker Funeral Home, along Hackett Ridge Rd.; and in the eastern part of the county, a Palmer Funeral Home on Ky. Rt. 10 on the Bracken side of the city of Germantown. Carroll Co. has two homes at Carrollton: the Graham-Dunn Funeral Home on S. Fift h St. and the Tandy-Eckler-Riley Funeral Home on Highland Ave. Gallatin Co. has one facility, the CarltonLowder Funeral Home on Main St. in Warsaw. Grant Co. has four funeral homes: the Elliston-Stanley Funeral Home on N. Main St. in Williamstown and on S. Main St. in Crittenden,
the Eckler-Hudson-McDaniel Home in Dry Ridge, and the Rogers Funeral Home in Corinth. Mason Co. has two funeral homes in Maysville, Brell & Son and Knox and Brothers, both on E. Second St.; and one in Mayslick, Palmer Funeral Home. In that same city, an African American funeral home opened in August 1929. Lexington native Shirley Arnold began operating a “colored undertaking establishment” in Maysville on E. Fourth St. in that year. How long Arnold remained in business is not known. In 1974, a long-standing funeral business tradition in Maysville ended with the closing of the Porter Funeral Home, which had operated for the previous 105 years. Owner Ashby F. Porter was the dean of funeral home directors and owners in the area. With the closing of the Porter Home, its ambulance ser vice also ceased. Owen Co. has two branches of the McDonald & New Funeral Home, both in Owenton, one along Main St., and another along W. Seminary St. For many years, at New Liberty in the northern part of the county, R. G. Know did the undertaking work. Know was a graduate of the nationally recognized Clark’s Embalming School in Cincinnati and was the leader of the profession in Owen county. He also did wallpapering and painting and sold buggies and whips on the side to fi ll in the slow times of his funeral business. Pendleton Co. has three funeral homes. Two are in Falmouth, the Peoples Funeral Home and the Woodhead Funeral Home, both on Shelby St. The Woodhead family’s firm is one of the state’s Centennial businesses. It also does business in Harrison Co., at Berry, having bought the former Roger P. Blair Home during the early 1940s. The other home in Pendleton Co. is Peoples Funeral Home on Main St. in Butler. Robertson Co. has two homes, both in Mount Olivet: Kain & Kabler on N. Walnut St. and the Robertson County Funeral Home on U.S. 62. For several years during the 1990s, Covington was home to one of the modern leaders in consolidation of the funeral industry. The RiverCenter building housed the Loewen Group, a conglomerate based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, that aggressively purchased funeral homes, cemeteries, and crematoria and sold burial insurance and prearrangement plans. Covington was Loewen’s U.S. headquarters until corporate financing forced a consolidation of the company itself. After its financial difficulties, the restraint of trade investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, and some massive lawsuits, Loewen no longer has offices in Covington. In April 1999, the company reported that it employed some 16,000 workers in 1,097 funeral homes and at more than 426 cemeteries in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with revenues of $1.1 billion. At the consumer level, Loewen did not mesh well locally. There is one operating crematory in Northern Kentucky, the Northern Kentucky Mortuary Service at Richwood in Boone Co. The same company also operates Heavenly Paws, a pet burial and cremation enterprise. Whereas nationally 26 percent of all human bodies are cremated, in Kentucky only 8 percent are cremated.
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“The City,” KJ, September 29, 1892, 8. “Colored Funeral Home Opens Here,” August 20, 1929, Funeral Home Vertical File, Mason Co. Museum, Maysville, Ky. “Henry Linnemann, Funeral Director,” KP, August 4, 1969, 8K. Kingsbury, Gilbert W. Allison & Rose Funeral Home, Inc. Covington, Ky.: Allison and Rose, 1977. Laderman, Gary. Rest in Peace. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003. “Maysville Funeral Home, City Landmark, to Close,” CE, March 13, 1974, 11. Mitford, Jessica. The American Way of Death. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963. “Public Inspection of Our New Funeral Home,” KP, May 18, 1935, 2.
Michael R. Sweeney
FURNITURE AND HOME FURNISHINGS. The thriving furniture industry that flourished in 19th-century Cincinnati spilled over into Northern Kentucky. As the city’s suburbs expanded into Kentucky, providers of household furnishings and equipment arose, as did manufacturers of some items. In Cincinnati, the firm of Mitchell and Rammelsberg (1847–1939) became nationally known for the furniture it supplied to the growing West and South. Internationally recognized as the world’s largest furniture factory, it employed about 1,500 workers along Cincinnati’s Second St. In Northern Kentucky, several retailers opened businesses along Monmouth St. in Newport and Madison Ave. in Covington. Household furniture was also manufactured in those cities, but to a lesser extent than in Cincinnati. The general area was ideal for the making and shipping of furniture: it was near the hardwood forests of the Midwest and was both a river port and a rail center.
Louis Marx & Bros. Furniture, Monmouth St., Newport, ca. 1923.