History Vehicle: Hearse idles in wake of low horsepower
By TERESA BLAND
CO-DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

The silent memento now resides in a narrow shed surrounded by garden implements. Its day has come and gone. For some people, it is a fascinating relic, a priceless historical treasure. To others, it is a reminder of what is to come in the future.

Horse-drawn hearses began to be replaced with motorized cars around 1917, but a few have survived in this era of black Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals. Once they were a sign of sadness and sorrow, but now they have become a symbol of what used to be.

The owners of Knell Mortuary in Carthage, Bob and Frank Jr., have received numerous requests to bring their old horse-drawn hearse to area parades. "But they won't furnish the horses," Frank Jr. said. Their cherry wood hearse with brass trimmings originally was made in 1896 by McCabe Powers Company. The 76-year-old Knell brothers have owned it for about 30 years.

"We got it from a place down in southeast Missouri," Bob said. "We spent quite a little bit cleaning it up and restoring it." "Lee Thompson and myself refinished the outside of it the best we could," Frank Jr. said. "After all their hard work, they've still had to make repairs."

"We had an old guy that thought he was smart and got it out of the shed by himself and took the whole damn roof off, so we had to get another one back on," Bob said. "We had to have one of the wheels rebuilt because the spokes dried out. We used to take them off and take them out to our cousin's pond and let them soak for a week, but we haven't done that in the past few years." At one time, a person could look inside the hearse, through the original curtains, and see a five-foot-long mummy-shaped coffin inside.

"We put it in that old hearse just for the heck of it and we've had a lot of fun with it," Frank Jr. said. A hundred years ago, Bob said the coffin would be placed into the hearse from the back and surrounded by flowers. "You can get underneath, and there is a trap door. I don't know what it's for, but I figure it's to push the flowers back or to get them out once they got to the cemetery." The hearse is rather heavy and requires a special type of horse or mule to pull it. "They have to be draft horses. We can't use riding horses because they don't know how to pull anything," Frank Jr. said.

Since there is a shortage of available pulling horses, the old hearse has made only six appearances in the last 10 years. "We took it over to Arma, Kan., because they said they had horses over there," Bob said. "We got there, but the guy didn't show up with the horses. We set it (the hearse) out in the park and let the people come look at it." The Knell brothers have had requests from people wanting to use the hearse for funerals, but with the problems of transporting the old hearse, they have to decline. Bob said a funeral director in Georgia purchased an old hearse last year for $10,000 and had it restored.

"I see him every year at our national convention and he said that they use it as much on funerals today as he does on the new cars he's got."