Whose Hearse Was It?

In 2009 the Portsmouth Historical Society welcomed back a horse drawn hearse that had been in storage for many years. An elder member of the society thought that the hearse had belonged to the Christian Union Church whose building was now the headquarters of the historical society.


Sure enough, a search of the church records showed that the church did indeed own a hearse. Church records from the Board meeting of March 12, 1871 indicated that: “The board unanimously recommended that Br. John T. Brown purchase a hearse of Langley and Bennett at a cost of $162 provided the sum of $200 is raised.”


Later records from December 16, 1871 showed that it was voted that:
“Br. John T. Brown who has the care of the hearse, be authorized to charge non-subscribers for its use, the sum of one dollar, said dollar to be added to the fund for keeping the hearse in repair.”


A search of the City of Newport Directory from the early 1870s showed that Langley and Bennett was a furniture maker in Newport that also made coffins, caskets and related funeral items.  They also were undertakers.
We were confident that the hearse we had was the one that would bring deceased church members on their last journey from their homes to the church and then on to Union Cemetery down the road.


As part of our celebration of the Christian Union Church building’s 150th anniversary, we read ALL the church records. To our amazement we found an entry in 1903 authorizing John T. Brown to dispose of the hearse and turn over the “hearse fund” that would have been used to maintain the hearse to the treasury.


The church hearse was gone by 1903, so what hearse did we have? We knew from research that the hearse was typical of what was used in the 1870s. Newspaper accounts from 1943 mentioned the donation of a hearse to the society by Mrs. David Anthony. According to the article the hearse had been purchased years before by Asa Anthony who lived on West Main Road. H. Frank Anthony, his son, went on the trip to New Bedford with his father to bring back a used hearse.


Why would Asa Anthony need a hearse? Newspaper articles again offer some clues. It seems that Asa B. Anthony was a coroner for Portsmouth in the 1880s. Asa Anthony would have used the hearse to transport bodies. Other articles comment that bodies remained at Asa Anthony’s home until a funeral. Ironically Asa Anthony’s home, once known as “Willowbrook” is the Connors Funeral Home today.

There are flames on top of the hearse that could be removed and replaced with plumes of black feathers. Of course the extent of the feathers signified how important the deceased was. It has a few practical features as well such as rollers to make it easier to push the coffin into the hearse and spikes that can be raised to keep the coffin in place. The hearse was originally painted black like most hearses but now it is painted grey.

We have no pictures of either the Christian Church hearse or that of Asa Anthony. We will never definitively know whose hearse this is but our assumption is that it served the Portsmouth Town Coroner –