Anatomy of a Funeral Home

OR GHOSTS ON THE FRONT PORCH

(Author's note: Some searches are just plain fun.)

As always, unapologetically unedited.

It hasn't been easy.

I mean I've traced a few folks in my time, but tracking down a place of business, even one as genealogically apt as a funeral home has met with its share of challenges. I suppose it might help if I knew the area or locale better, but that's just me making excuses for being less than adept at tracing the story of a house, the families who came through it, or "the backdrop" to the story of a particular home that just happened to once be used as a funeral parlor.

Did ya get all that?

Hey, this all started out innocently enough; a recently retired friend and former co-worker was visiting here from her new home in Iowa. In our catching up with each other's lives, she mentioned that she is staying with her kids in the town of Carson, Pottawatomie County, Iowa, while her new home is being built. Her kids live in an older home having purchased it a couple of years ago. She thinks it was built sometime in the 1920s. And, she told me that things were going along well, that it's a big enough home, and that she and her husband have been staying downstairs in home's basement while construction carries on for their new place in a town or two over. 

Then she mentioned something unusual about her kids place where she's been staying. It's a former funeral home.

Yes, my friend is living in the basement of a former funeral home.

Hey, I'm good if she and her husband are. She went on to say that the home's basement has some built in undertaker features like strange "chutes" for shuffling things in and out or up and down from the different levels of the mortuary, you know like maybe for caskets or embalming supplies or..... (???). She said too that her kids had purchased this older home in kind of a mess, that it had, among other things, and besides being a funeral home from the 1920s and 30s, also become a hoarder's house. We chuckled a bit about all of this, and I had to ask her if she didn't get very cold living in that funeral home's basement. She said she always felt a bit cold anyway, but that she and her husband were doing quite well, and just enjoying being with their kids and grandkids for the time being while still looking forward to their new soon to be completed home. I didn't, but I should have said to her, "Dang, Halloween must have be a blast for you and the kids at that funeral parlor!" LOL.

As the conversation whent on, she stopped to ask me, "Hey, if you get time, would you see what you can find out about the house? I am curious..."

What could I say?

I look for old ghosts all the time. I figured a funeral home would be right up my alley. I have to say though, tracking the history or what I like to call the "anatomy" of a funeral home in a small Iowa town over the course of a century or so hasn't been a cake walk. However, the temptation to be a grave digger of another sort has proven too tempting, and well, I had to dive in and see just what I could find.

You know, like House Hunters International goes vintage six feet under?

Well, you get my drift.

Anyway, my friend didn't have a lot of clues to go on. She did say that from what she knew, the undertaker who owned the house had also been a cabinet maker. This was probably a small town "one stop shop" for one's undertaking and casket needs.  She indicated that the population of the town is only about a thousand people. I figured that this small population was a good thing in terms of research. At least I shouldn't be looking at a lot of competing mortuaries. Or....?

And (of course) she had the address: 559 High Street.

So where to start? Where to begin? 

I figured I would work backwards, you know, from the current local mortuary/undertaker to see when they'd gone in business, etc, and or if they were an outside concern or a local dude (or family) who decided to take over the business. What I found was kind of a mixed of records. What I did not find was an exact identification of "559 High Street" as ever having been a mortuary. 

Still, I have no reason to discount my friend's story, and as I looked further, I could easily see why.

After backtracing on a few more "modern" undertaking business for Carson, Iowa - businesses that had obviously expanded and (thankfully) modernized since the 1920s basement embalming strategies - I discovered (from what I can tell) that there was (and or "is") no record of "559 High Street" in then U.S. Federal Census records for 1920, 30, 40, or 1950. (It remains to be seen how the 1960 census will shape up.) Now please do correct me if I am wrong here. I was as surprised as you are to mention it here.

Oh, and please feel free to double check me. I'm an old man not AI.

Anyway, what the heck, no address???

I mean I did leaf through the 50 or so odd pages of the census records in 1920 and 1930 thinking that surely one of them would at least record "High Street" and if so that I could the tangenitally zero in on "559." Such has not been the case. While some of Carson, Iowa's streets are mentioned in any one of those census records, most of the enumerations are taken in order of visitaiton and numbered accordingly. This doesn't mean that "559 High Street" doesn't exist (obviously it does my friend lives there) only that Carson, Iowa is such a small community, and that at the time when the enumerators came through they placed order of visitation in the "enumeration district" (Carson, Iowa has two of them) as more relevant (?) or important than listing actual addresses or residence numbers. 

Seriously? Whatever.

Okay, I am getting ahead of my reconscontruction here. 

As you can see from the image above, the current mortuary in Carson, Iowa, is called "Loess Hills."

But no, they aren't located at "559 High Street." 

      Above: 2026

And just in case you weren't wondering, this place has nothing to do with the present story or 559 High Street, or my retired friend and co-worker. BUT, it is a step in working my way backwards to "get there," and, is in essence, a part of the "anatomy" (or pedigree) of the funeral home in question.

Now Loess Hills, wasn't always there. At one point it was called Hertz Funeral Home. (I know, kind of an unfortunate name.) And I am not going to bore you with a lot more of what I presume to be Carson, Iowa's funeral home history. 

These images should help almost fill in almost all of the blanks. 

Above: 2001

Above: 1986

Are you asleep yet? 

Still nothing about "559 High Street."

Now before I get too much further - I have to tell you that there isn't a lot about that fabled address to be found. I already mentioned that the census records are notoriously lacking in any street address name number or detail. So bear with me when I have to follow the house back in time via the name of the city's under taker.

And that brings me here - to 1949.

Above: 1949

Okay, so you're thinking "1949" big deal - and I do realize that it is a lot of years in between 1986 and 1949. And truthfully, I'm not sure I haven't missed an undertaker (or two) in between 1949 and 1986. However, hang in there with me. This advertisement tells me something I didn't have before. It tells me the name of the undertaker. Yes, it tells me that "Old Mac McKee" (Lloyd Wheeler Mckee) was at this time in Carson, Iowa's past indeed, the undertaker. 

This give me a little more meat on the bone so to speak. I am getting closer to the main set of clues my friend has given me to work with and closer to the makings of "a 1920s style" family funeral parlor."

Quite specifically, this next piece states that Old Lloyd "purchaes a house" in Carson and that he intends to open a funeral home in Carson. The year is 1945. 

The question: Is this the house at "559 High Street?"

    

Above: 1945

The answer is going to have to come from a couple of other places. And the first place it is going to come from is here, in this 1941 article below. I think if you read this article thoroughly, a couple of things are really going to stand out:

 

                   

Above: 1941

I think the biggest thing that stands out is:

The name of the funeral home owner in Carson, Iowa, for 32 years. My third grade math class tells me that "Mr. A.C. Sivers." was Carson, Iowa's undertaker at the time of his death since 1909.

The second biggest thing is: 

"He opened a hardware and furniture store...."

(This was almost a word for word match of what my friend had said...)

And lastly, that the funeral took place at "the home" meaning his own funeral home.

So I am pretty well assured here that in a town of 613 people in 1940 that there was only one funeral home and undertaker, and that man was almost certainly, Mr. A.C. Sivers - who, was actually known of as "Arch Sivers" and who had been born as "Archibald Carlyle Sivers."

Carson's undertaker.

Once I got this far, the information about A.C. Siver started to flood in. Here is some misc information about him:

In fact, there started to be SO MUCH information about undertaker A. C. Sivers I was a bit blown away:

                    

Above: 1912                                 

     

Above: Said to be Archibald Carlyle Sivers, Undertaker of Carson, Iowa

Above: The parents and siblings of "Old Arch Sivers" - undertaker.

Heck, there was even a picture of the young Archie Sivers and his family. Still, I didn't have anything that might tie Archibald Carlyle Sivers to "559 High Street." I mean, all the pieces seem to fit. I'd tracked the mortuaries themselves through time, and I had a distinct advantage that I was/am dealing with only one small in size Iowa town.

I felt in my gut I had to be right. 

This had to be "our guy." AND if this was "our guy," than regardless of what the census images showed this had to be our place, right?

Then I found it.

The first picture up above at the top.

The Siver family ghosts on the front porch.

So I looked at the house in somewhat recent memory:

  

So while I have no census records, no street directories, and only advertisements through time, I do believe I just may have found 

"559 High Street"

And as it might be noted, I have also found the family of Archibald Carlyle Siver, the said undertaker and furniture proprietor of Carson Iowa, who owned the place. I could be perhaps quite crazy here, and I haven't attempted an identity for each person in the photo - but that brick work looks pretty familiar in both picures and facades do change over time. 

So if you are out and about in Carson, Iowa, I hope you will stop buy the cemetery and say hello to Old Arch Sivers and his wife. It might be fun to swap a few stories with them. LOL.

         

       

In the meantime, I will leave it to your judgment if I have indeed identified the Ghosts on The Front Porch of 559 High Street, of Carson, Iowa.

Wink!

☮