What happened next with the old hotel may not have been on anyone’s bingo card, but it certainly helped shape the history of this incredible home. The Crawford heirs sold the hotel to the Crouch-Wilson & Co. The Hinkles and a Mr. George Anderson managed it for a time. In 1936, it was sold to A. M. Hoover who had much different plans for this hotel – a funeral home.
With reportedly 22 rooms at the time, he made changes to the hotel in order to suit his funeral business and family needs. He widened doorways, moved staircases, added doors, and enlarged porches. One notable exterior difference, still seen today, are the four large pillars across the front and the concreted porch. Also, the hotel originally had a detatached kitchen house, as was common back then to avoid homes catching fire if the kitchen did so. Mr. Hoover attached the kitchen house to the back of the home.
Hoover married Slater Stammer who died in 1954, but they had six children. The family called this home while also running the funeral business here. While he had branched out on his own when he purchased the old hotel, Hoover was not new to the field. He had been an undertaker since 1905 and watched the funeral business change drastically from horse-drawn hearses to ambulance transportation. From gravediggers being paid $2.50 to machines digging the graves for $200 per job.
Funerals were often held at churches and graveside, but sometimes families requested they were held on the premises at Hoover’s funeral home. In those cases, the Hoover family would move furniture in their living room to create a chapel for services. Irene Hoover, his daughter, remembered as a child when bodies would be placed in her bedroom at night and she would have to sleep upstairs. She said she just got used to it. They all did.
Embalming was still a new practice when Hoover first began directing funerals and he did so in homes until 1952 when it became an “authentic funeral home”. Depending on the quality of the casket, prices ranged from $15 to $350. Funeral costs would often include flowers for $6 and even underwear! Those would run you $1.25. Hoover retired from the funeral business in 1965. He had a love of furniture-making and was part owner with his son of Hoover Furniture Co. in Shelbyville, so he likely spent his later years enjoying this hobby. Mr. A. M. Hoover sold the home in 1976 and died as Bell Buckle’s oldest citizen (at the time) at the age of 97 in 1981.
Many Bell Buckle farewells have either been connected to this home or held in this home. The days of hotel happenings and funeral facilitating may have been over, but this old place wasn’t finished yet.
Leave a Reply