National Funeral Museum

5/17/2012 On one of my trips to Costco in Houston I passed a sign that pointed the way to a Funeral Museum. Our friends Vern & Linda are here so we decided to take a day trip and find this museum.

What an interesting place. They laid out the interior in different sections. Vern & Linda in the section saluting our servicemen.

Presidential funerals

Abe Lincoln was fully laid out

There was a section on the funerals of the Popes

A section on the Egyptians and their mummies.

This led to the section on embalming, how it started during the Civil War and the process they used (no photos of this).

They have one section that displays different types of coffins.

Behind the boat coffin is a chicken coffin a cow and this lovely fish. 

 

There was even a coffin built for 3.

The story was that this couple lost their baby and decided they couldn’t live without her so he was going to kill his wife then take his life. They had made arrangements to have the baby dug up and then all three were going to be buried together. The couple changed their minds and moved away. Strange story.

There was a great display of different types of hearses.

This was a Funeral Bus, It would carry the casket, the pallbearers, and 20 mourners. The bus was originally built on a Kelly Truck Chassis. Initially owned by a San Francisco funeral home it was climbing uphill to a cemetery when the weight of the aft section caused the bus to tip back. Pallbearers tumbled into the mourners and the casket overturned. The embarrassed funeral director removed it from service took it off the chassis and for next 40 years a ranch hand called it home. It has been restored to running condition on a Packard Chassis. The tires and wheels are original with tires made out of hard rubber.

This hearse was made out of hand-carved wood.

There is a new section that hadn’t opened yet that displayed the funerals and death of famous people.

We all really enjoyed this unique museum and now we are getting hungry. We stopped at PPL Motorhomes and both Dick & Vern bought a new TV antenna called a Jack to replace the batwing for local channels. Then onto The Haven for lunch. Linda had met the Chef on an Airplane to Dallas some time ago and he invited her to visit if they were ever in Houston. We had a great lunch of appetizers then drove around downtown gawking at the tall very strange looking buildings.