Gerdes-Meyer Funeral Home | Fairbury, Nebraska (2024)

FAQs

Who owns the biggest funeral home? ›

Service Corporation International (SCI) is the largest funeral home company in the world, with a network of over 2,000 locations across the United States and Canada.

Heaton,Heaton-Bowman-Smith & Sidenfaden Chapel, the oldest funeral home in the State of Missouri and the oldest business firm in the City of St. Joseph, was founded in 1842 by David J.

A fraud inquiry has begun into the funeral plan provider Safe Hands, which collapsed leaving thousands of people with lost savings. Some 46,000 people had paid into a fund towards future funeral costs.

If the human remains are properly preserved they can be stored for longer periods of time. In most cases, so long as the remains are properly refrigerated, funeral homes can store a body for a few days to a few weeks.

This American tradition of hosting funerals in the family parlor is the genesis of the term “funeral parlor.” In more wealthy homes, a false (death) door was place off the parlor. It led outside to remove a deceased family member.

The earliest evidence of wooden coffin remains, dated at 5000 BC, was found in the Tomb 4 at Beishouling, Shaanxi. Clear evidence of a rectangular wooden coffin was found in Tomb 152 in an early Banpo site.

Three large corporations now own 15% of the 23,000 homes in the funeral home industry. Service Corporation International (SCI), based in Houston, is the largest of the three, followed by Loewen Group Inc., based in Vancouver, Canada and Philadelphia, and Stewart Enterprises Inc., based in New Orleans.

1. Alexander the Great- $600 millionThis ancient Macedon king who presided over the largest empire in the world from the Ionian Sea to the Himalayas enjoyed the most expensive funeral till date. He passed away in 323 BC and was placed in Gold Casket and transported in a gold carriage pulled by 60 horses.

A Nation Mourns

His coffin was the most elaborate of that time. President Lincoln also had the distinction of having the largest funeral throughout the world, until President John F. Kennedy's death in 1963. It could be said that Abraham Lincoln's death triggered the beginning of modern day funeral service.

But, of course, that's all fiction. The Addams family doesn't actually exist, but the Blumberg family in Dresden, Ontario, comes pretty close! The family behind the Discovery+ show We Bought a Funeral Home have shown the world their spooky side, turning an old funeral home into an incredible work of art.