This is a reprint of a “From the Local History Room” column that first appeared in July 2012, before the launch of this weblog.
From funerals at home to funeral homes of Pekin
By Jared Olar
Library Assistant
When a loved one dies, most of us will have dealings with a local funeral home or mortuary. The prevailing custom today is to gather for funerals or memorial services in a funeral parlor.
But it was not always that way. In the 1800s, wakes and funerals took place in the home of the deceased. The transition from “funerals in the home” to “funerals in a funeral home” was accomplished more than a century ago – and one of those responsible for effecting that change was a Pekin funeral director named Henry Wilmont.
Wilmont was a son-in-law of Charles Kuecks, founder and proprietor of Kuecks Funeral Home which formerly existed at 31 S. Capitol Street, occupying the space that is now the front lawns of the Pekin Municipal Building and Tazewell County Justice Center. “Pekin: A Pictorial History” (1998, 2004) reports that Wilmont was “a national proponent of having funerals in a parlor rather than in the deceased’s home.”
Kuecks Funeral Home got its start in 1882 as Kuecks-Wubben Furniture and Undertaking, located at 209-210 Court Street. (In the past, coffins and furniture were often manufactured by the same men.) Later on, Wilmont joined the undertaking firm, which moved to the Capitol Street location in 1921. During the 1920s, another son-in-law of Kuecks, Clyde Cowser, joined as a partner. Kuecks died in 1929, and the business became Kuecks-Woolsey Funeral Home in 1950, when Robert Woolsey and Fred Soldwedel became partners, later being joined by Louis Meyer in 1954.
In 1963, Woolsey became the funeral home’s sole proprietor. “Woolsey’s Pekin Chapel, at 301 Broadway is the only structure in the history of Pekin to be constructed solely for use as a funeral home,” according to “Pekin: A Pictorial History.” Now known as Davison-Fulton-Woolsey, through its succession of owners this funeral home qualifies as Pekin’s oldest mortuary.
Also boasting a long history is Henderson Funeral Home at 2131 Velde Drive. 420 Walnut Street. Henderson Funeral Home, formerly Noel-Henderson, was founded by Orville W. Noel in 1900 at the Albertson & Koch furniture store in downtown Pekin on Court Street. Later he relocated to the Zerwekh Building, which later became the home of the Pekin Daily Times. In 1925 he moved his funeral business to 430 Elizabeth Street, where it stayed until a fire in 1939.
However, by that time Noel had acquired one of Pekin’s oldest structures, the old Rupert Park Estate on Walnut Street, an 11-room colonial-style mansion that had been built in 1862 by pioneer settler Gideon Rupert, who named our county after Sen. Littleton W. Tazewell of Virginia. Gideon’s son F. E. Rupert further improved the mansion and estate. After Noel’s death in 1946, his employee William Weimer carried on the business until his own death in 1964. Merl Henderson, who had worked alongside Weimer for several years, bought the funeral home in 1965, and the Henderson family maintained and preserved the historic Rupert mansion as their funeral parlor until April 2013, when the funeral home moved to new facilities on Velde Drive in northern Pekin.
Though not boasting as long a history as the Woolsey or Henderson funeral homes, Abts Mortuary can boast that it has been owned and operated by the same family for longer than any other Pekin funeral home. Abts was founded in 1934 by John and Gladys Abts, beginning at Sixth and Broadway and then moving in 1942 to its present location at Fifth and Park Avenue, the former home of Pekin Mayor Everett W. Wilson (1893-1894, 1899-1900). Gladys’s father had operated a funeral home in Randolph, Neb., and in 1918 Gladys became the first woman in Nebraska to obtain an embalmer’s license. Abts Mortuary is now in its fourth generation in the mortuary business.
Finally, Preston Funeral Home was founded by Clarence and Roland Preston in 1934 at 337 St. Mary St. It relocated in 1957 to the Teis Smith mansion at 500 N. Fourth St. D. Neal Hanley began operating Preston-Hanley in 1965, and his twin sons, D. Neale “Buster” Hanley II and Charles R., succeeded him (Charles leaving the business and becoming Tazewell County Coroner in 2018). In 2011 the Hanleys established Pekin’s newest cemetery, Prairie Haven on Veterans Drive.
