Undertakers and Funeral Homes, 1902–1984

1902 – 1984; the 1868 state is a searched negative

How it was missed:The trade is recoverable whole from the directories, and it ends, unusually, in the appellate reports, where a Mishawaka funeral house's fight with its own city preserves the business's ground and workings better than any directory.

The directory course: the 1868 county directory carries no undertaker or embalmer heading for Mishawaka — the trade's first state in this record is an absence, printed as such. Johnson's directory of 1902–03 gives the town's first undertaker of record: Feiten Eugene A., undertaker, 205 N. Main. By 1921 the trade has consolidated into one house with three headings' worth of presence: the Finch Undertaking Co., 202 N. Main, stands under Ambulance Service, under Embalmers, and under Funeral Directors, and its other arm, the Finch Auto Livery at 207 Lincoln Way W., holds the Funeral Cars heading and both of the book's motor-livery headings — the undertaking house is also the town's funeral-carriage and motor-livery business, the hearse and the livery stable in one firm. The 1949 classified, read through a poor scan, shows the trade opened out again: the Ballard Funeral Home, at 502 Lincoln Way; a Bent Funeral Home; the Thallemer Funeral Home, at 503 W. 3d; and Bubb Fred H. Chapel at 202 N. Main — the Finch house's address, the trade's ground held across the succession, whose terms the record reached does not give. The 1956 classified carries the line one state further: Bent & Sprague Funeral Home, 118 S. Mill; BUBB FUNERAL CHAPEL, still at 202 N. Main; and the Thallmer-Goethals Funeral Home at the Thallemer address, 503 W. 3d — the names printed as each book spells them, the Thallemer/Thallmer variation standing unmerged. Ballard does not stand under the 1956 heading.

The trade in the law reports: Bubb's house then enters the record at a strength no directory gives. In the 1970s the City of Mishawaka, in its federally funded downtown renewal, moved to condemn the Fred W. Bubb Funeral Chapel's ground, and the litigation reached the Indiana Court of Appeals twice — 396 N.E.2d 943 (1979) and 469 N.E.2d 757 (1984). The opinions describe the business as the trade actually ran it: the funeral parlor on the North Main parcel — the courts give the number as 204 N. Main, against the directories' 202, and both numbers stand here as their records give them — and, two blocks away at First and Spring streets, the company's garage and warehouse, where it stored its limousines and its caskets, held by the trial court to be integral parts of the one business. A funeral home's two-parcel working plant, described under oath in a condemnation record: that is the undertakers' entry at its fullest, and it belongs to the gap pass because no other file of this build had occasion to open the case. Fred W. Bubb's founding year for the chapel was not verified and is named in the closing article.

The boundary item: Mishawaka's own 1921 directory carries one ethnic-language undertaker's advertisement — a display ad in Hungarian, "Temetkezési Vállalkozó," undertaker, offering service "éjjel nappal," night and day. Its firm is János Steh & Co., and its address, 214 W. Washington Ave., is South Bend's: a South Bend house advertising across the river in Mishawaka's book, in the language of Mishawaka's Hungarian families. It is printed here as what it is — evidence that in 1921 the Hungarian trade was served from South Bend, at directory strength — and not as a Mishawaka house.

Sources:

1. Business Directory of St. Joseph County (1868), the Mishawaka list — no undertaker or embalmer heading stands in the list, searched and printed as a negative.
2. Johnson's Business & Professional Directory (1902–03), the Mishawaka Business Directory — "Feiten Eugene A, undertaker, 205 N Main."
3. Polk's Mishawaka City Directory (1921), classified directory — headings Ambulance Service, Embalmers, Funeral Directors (Finch Undertaking Co., 202 N. Main); Funeral Cars and Livery — Automobile / Livery — Motor Car (Finch Auto Livery, 207 Lincoln Way W.); and the Hungarian-language display advertisement of János Steh & Co., 214 W. Washington Ave., South Bend, name as read from a garbled scan.
4. Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka City Directory (1949), Mishawaka classified, heading Funeral Directors; Polk (1956), Mishawaka classified, heading Funeral Directors — the rosters as printed above, from poor scans, legible names only.
5. City of Mishawaka v. Fred W. Bubb Funeral Chapel, Inc., 396 N.E.2d 943 (Ind. Ct. App. 1979), and 469 N.E.2d 757 (Ind. Ct. App. 1984) — the condemnation course, the parlor parcel, and the First and Spring garage and warehouse for limousines and caskets.