From the 1874 DuPage Atlas – Frederick Long

At sixteen years old, Fred Long emigrated from Stuttgart, Germany in 1853 and was living in Naperville by 1856. There is no record of his parents living or being buried in Naperville, so it’s possible he was alone. Fred worked as a cabinetmaker in town and he prospered, opening his own shop as early as 1861.  

Also in 1861, he married Amelia Beidelman, the oldest of ten children born to William and Eliza Beidelman who arrived in Naperville around 1847. Of course, the Civil War was just starting during this time and Fred was drafted in 1863, serving in the 49^th Infantry, and was mustered out as a sergeant. 

 

Fred and Amelia’s only child, Charles, was born in 1868 and the family enjoyed being active members of the town. Naperville’s fledgling fire department started in the 1870s and Fred became a volunteer of Rescue Hook and Ladder Company in 1875. 

 

The illustration from the 1874 Atlas shows the F. Long storefront with an addition to the side. The Sanborn Map from 1886 describes this addition as a “dwelling,” so it seems the Longs may have lived next to their shop. 

 

During those days, woodworkers made coffins as well as furniture, as described in his advertisement. Fred also served as an undertaker and attended mortuary school in the 1880s to expand his business even further.

 

James Nichols, who was a professor at what was then known as North-Western College, partnered with John Kraushar and Fred to launch the Naperville Lounge Factory in 1893. They hired Nichol’s student, Peter Kroehler, as a clerk. The business – and Kroehler – both flourished. Kroehler became a partner in 1896 and bought the company in 1916.

 

Fred and Amelia’s only son, Charles, died at age 30, married, but childless. One of Amelia’s nephews, Oliver Beidelman, who was already working with Uncle Fred, wound up taking over the furniture and the undertaking businesses, passing both along to other family members. It was Oliver who, along with his son “Dutch,” built the brick Beidelman’s Furniture store that is currently on the corner of Washington Street and Jackson Avenue, replacing the shop pictured in the 1874 Atlas. While the funeral parlor space there is still visible, the Beidelman funeral business moved to another downtown location and one in south Naperville. 

By 1911, Fred’s health was failing and his nephew was running the business. He was cared for by Amelia and her sister Ella until his death in 1912 at age 74. The sisters lived together until Amelia died in 1922 and her Beidelman relations continue their business pursuits in Naperville today. 

Naperville 1920 Flashback: Special Christmas Presents

While the 1920s started cautiously, with the country still recovering from the war and the Spanish flu, the decade would go on to enjoy unprecedented prosperity and technological wonders before onset of the Great Depression.

Christmas gifts increasingly included big-ticket items for the home. Kitchens had been evolving with the addition of plumbing and electricity. For years, the kitchen area was mainly a table and some open shelves because wet and messy prep work was done in the scullery or outside while food was stored in a cool larder or cellar. A popular gift in the 1920s was a free-standing cabinet that stored the most often used food prep items and was equipped with flour and sugar dispensers.

Beidelman’s furniture store offered these for sale in The Clarion, one of Naperville’s earliest newspapers. Frederick Long opened the store in 1861 who sold it to his nephew Oliver Beidelman. Family continues to run the shop on Washington Street to this day.

Another in-town furniture store, Friedrich’s, advertised Victrola phonographs for the family, which is also a pricey gift at $99. This shop was on Jefferson in the building where Floyd’s 99 Barbershop currently operates. Charles Friedrich had only recently become the proprietor after having worked for the previous owner, John Kraushar.

It’s funny to see the “young folks” dancing in the advertisement since dancing was mostly frowned upon in Naperville at the time. A member of Naperville High School class of 1933 recalls that at their senior banquet, “none of us in the class were allowed to dance at the Tea Room. Our town was located in the middle of the Bible Belt, and social dancing was still considered in the ‘near occasion of sin’ category.”

As was common, both Beidelman and Friedrich were undertakers as well as furniture makers because coffin-building is similar to furniture-building. Both continue to operate businesses today as Friedrich- Jones Funeral Home and Beidelman-Kunsch Funeral Homes & Crematory.

A Book Review Perfect for October

Graveyards of ChicagoThe People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke and Ursula Bielski
Lake Claremont Press

www.lakeclaremontpress.com

In 1982, I packed a wicker basket with tasty treats (including canned heat to melt butter for the lobster!) and took my new husband on a picnic. In Graceland Cemetery.

Just recently, I read the book Graveyards of Chicago; The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries and relived some of my favorite local haunts, if you’ll excuse the expression. I was also reminded that a few bad apples are ruining the cemetery experience for the rest of us.

Graceland, on the north side of Chicago, is lovely, peaceful and not at all a strange place to picnic. Families in many cultures have a tradition of gathering in cemeteries, packing respect for their ancestors along with the sandwiches. Unfortunately, while people in Chicago today may be fascinated by cemeteries, too many pages in this book recount the damage done by vandals and thieves in these historic parks.

A book like this is a mixed blessing:  I’m sorry to make it easy for those bad apples to find cool places to vandalize, but I’m so thankful to have these graveyards documented for posterity. 

Graveyards of Chicago is written by Matt Hucke and Ursula Bielski, both of whom are involved in the paranormal community. Judging from the amount of research that went into the book, you can see that these two are concerned with preserving the cemeteries rather than exploiting them. The research is so detailed, however, that you probably won’t sit down and read this from cover to cover. Reading Graveyards is more like an afternoon of sightseeing:  After a few parks, it’s time to take a break, but you’ll enjoy visiting a few more on a future afternoon.

In fact, on these lovely fall days you might want to actually visit these cemeteries with Graveyards of Chicago as your guidebook. Just remember to be respectful of the property and clean up after your picnic.

Businesses that Reach across the Decades

 While we in Naperville enjoy our reputation as active members of the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor, we also love our history. So it’s no surprise that our business community reflects the same innovation and traditional ties.


Historically, woodworkers who normally crafted furniture and cabinetry also made coffins when the need arose. Serving as the community’s undertaker became a logical second profession.






In the early twentieth century, undertakers could be counted on to have a vehicle long enough to transport a body on a stretcher, so their hearses often pulled double duty as the city’s ambulance service as well.


Oliver and Arthur Beidelman were brothers who worked for their uncle Fred Long and Long’s partner Peter Kroehler at their furniture and under-taking business on Washington and Jackson.




At one point a chapel was added to the building specifically for funeral services. The Fitness Experts are currently in the chapel’s ground floor.

Oliver’s  son took over the funeral parlor operations with partner John Kunsch and his granddaughter continues to run the family furniture business.


Charles Friedrich was another such furniture maker and undertaker who had a shop on Jefferson Street. In the 1930’s he moved his business to Henry Durrand’s expansive home on Mill Street. Friedrich’s son Ben continued operating the funeral home after his father died and eventually hired an assistant in 1967 named Ray Jones.


After Ben Friedrich’s passed, Jones purchased the business, adding his name to Friedrich’s and keeping the beautiful Mill Street house. Son Dave and daughter Stephanie are now part of the Friedrich-Jones team. Ray Jones was honored by the Naperville Chamber with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009 .

The funeral director profession certainly has changed over the years, but service to our community obviously has not!

Museum of Funeral Customs to Live Again!

Actually, just the artifacts will live again, but even that's pretty exciting!

You may remember the Brief History story from last year about the Museum of Funeral Customs being forced to close due to the economy, lowered tourism and greater expenses. The Museum used to be right outside the gates of Oakwood Cemetery where Abraham Lincoln is buried with his family in Springfield. It was a fitting location, not only because of its proximity to a cemetery, but also because the museum held many Lincoln exhibits.

Just this month, the Hancock County Journal-Pilot reported that the entire contents of the Funeral Customs museum has been transferred into the care of the Kibbe Hancock Heritage Museum. Kibbe received tables, chairs and display cases in addition to a computer record system, but most importantly, the museum is now the keeper of hundreds of artifacts and research items.

The Museum of Funeral Customs closed their doors in the spring of 2009 and hoped to be able to move all of their collection to one owner rather than see it broken up and scattered. There was no cost to the Kibbe museum, and they are already planning how to best display this wealth of material.

They hope to have the Lincoln exhibits ready by March of 2012 which will include a miniature of Lincoln's funeral train and a replica of his coffin. This spring already the museum will put on view a Victorian embalming room and a selection of unusual caskets.

The Kibbe Hancock Heritage Museum is in Carthage, Illinois, not too far from Macomb. The Funeral Museum artifacts will be a great addition to their current collection and it's wonderful to know that someone has taken responsibility to bring those macabre items back to life.

Photographing the Recently Deceased

In preparation for a teen writing class around Halloween, Kate did a little research on Victorian post-mortem photography.

The 2001 Nicole Kidman movie "The Others" was Kate's first introduction to post-mortem photos. Since then, she's read a few books on the subject, and thought it was a sufficiently macabre subject to hold the interest of blasé teenagers.

One website called it "almost cliché" to find photographs or daguerreotypes of dead relatives when paging through old family albums, but it wasn't a cliché that Kate had ever stumbled upon before.

Until this past month when she popped into her computer a CD that was distributed at a family reunion over the summer. Several funeral photos featuring the recently deceased were among the wedding and baby shots, including the one accompanying this article.

Post-mortem photography became popular and then faded away just before and just after the year 1900, due mainly to the refinement of photography itself. The daguerreotype process was patented in 1839, but capturing a person's likeness remained an expensive and exclusive luxury for decades. Sitting for a photo was a rare splurge.

Still, a photo was a precious reminder of a loved one more personal and evocative than a lock of hair or an amateur sketch. And if your last chance to photograph your loved one occurred just before they were buried, what other choice did you have?

Memento mori photographers tried to make the deceased look as lifelike as possible, as if the subject had just fallen asleep in a chair or on the bed. But some photos clearly show a figure in rigor mortis with their eyes open standing fixed to a frame or leaning at a desk. Another common practice was to paint eyes into the photo over the subject's eyelids to make them look more life-like.

Family groupings where one child in the group has obviously passed on were also common, however creepy it seems to us today. Many photos also exist of parents holding their dead babies for their only portraits, which actually has become common practice once again in hospital settings for still-born or terminally ill infants.

Once photography became cheaper and more wide-spread, people began to take lots of photos on lots of occasions and the need for memorial photography "died away."

Rest in Peace, Museum of Funeral Customs

Photo by WikiMedia Commons

The Museum of Funeral Customs used to be right outside the entrance to Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield where Abraham Lincoln is buried. Interesting more to history lovers than those seeking sensationalism, it was a nifty little treasure trove of funeral lore.

The Victorians were particularly adept at celebrating death-in-life, perhaps due to Queen Victoria's forty years of mourning for her beloved husband Albert. Funeral clothes, hearses, flowers, embalmers - all were explained in the museum for visitors who have become less and less involved in the mourning process. Not so long ago, families prepared and waked their loved ones at home, often burying them on their own acreage, but today a whole industry takes care of the tasks involved.

Unfortunately, the Museum of Funeral Customs closed in the spring of 2009 due to lack of funds. Perhaps one day, it will be resurrected for a new generation of history buffs.

President Abraham Lincoln Buried 145 Years Ago Today on the Fourth of May

In the last edition of this newsletter we mentioned that 145 years ago to the day, Abraham Lincoln was lying in state in Washington, DC. Today, May 4, was the day he was finally laid to rest in the temporary tomb in Springfield, Illinois. For the two weeks between those dates, Lincoln's funeral train traveled 1,700 miles across the country so thousands of citizens could pay their respects.

USAToday has an interesting animated map that shows the train's route and shows how many people were in attendance at each stop along the way.

On a side note, Keene State College in New Hampshire recently held a screening for the sole surviving copy of an early Lincoln film -- that is, a film about Lincoln not a film of Lincoln!

The 30-minute movie, called "When Lincoln Paid," starred Francis Ford, the older brother of John Ford who directed "The Quiet Man." The 97-year old motion picture was found when a contractor was clearing out an old barn.

To read more about the film and view clips of "When Lincoln Paid," visit Keene College's website.

Abraham Lincoln's Funeral 145 Years Ago Today

John Wilkes Booth shot the President on the evening of April 14 and on April 15 Lincoln died. That was just six days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate army to General Grant. Preparations began for an elaborate funeral demanded by a grieving country, a sort of national expression of all the personal griefs caused by the Civil War.

The President's body was embalmed, a procedure that had advanced considerably in technique during the War Between the States when so many bodies of soldiers were being sent home. Still, an embalmer traveled with the body all the way to Springfield, Illinois and frequently applied chalk dust and rouge to Lincoln's face and hands in an effort to mask the signs of decay.

25,000 people walked through the East Room where President Lincoln lay in state, standing in line for six hours to do so. The actual funeral service was held on Wednesday, April 19 and was attended by approximately 600 guests.

Platforms had been built in the East Room: one, a heavily draped bier supported and protected the coffin, and another large, stepped stage filled most of the rest of the room for the standing mourners. The mirrors were all shrouded, as was the custom, and white flowers sent by groups and individuals surrounded the bier, which was a somewhat new custom.

The darkened room was lit only by candlelight and "at the head and foot and on each side of the casket of their dead chief stood the motionless figures of his armed warriors," according to Noah Brooks, a contemporary journalist.

Following the funeral, the casket was taken to the the Capitol Building in a hearse pulled by six white horses and followed by thousands and thousands of dignitaries, Union soldiers and freed blacks. The procession was led by a platoon of black soldiers who had arrived a little too late to join the end of the line and simply turned around to become its head.

Another 25,000 or so filed into the Capitol to pay their respects 145 years ago today, April 20. Then on April 21, the bodies of the President and his beloved son Willie began the long train journey back to Springfield.