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Johnston Funeral Home and Beers Funeral Home records
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Held at: Delaware County Historical Society [Contact Us]408 Avenue of the States, Chester, Pennsylvania, 19013
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Delaware County Historical Society. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Albert Shields Beers was born to Andrew and Adeline Beers in 1864. He apprenticed to an undertaker in Philadelphia before opening his own funeral home. He married Martha E. Hannum in 1892; they had two children, Albert Shield Beers, Jr. (1895-1979) and M. Esther Beers (born 1900). Albert S. Beers, Sr. died in 1938.
Albert S. Beers, Jr. joined his father in the funeral business. Albert S. Beers, Jr. purchased an historic house at 67-69 E. Baltimore Ave in Lansdowne, Pa. (built in 1895) in 1915. After converting the first floor, Beers Funeral Home operated at that location until 1948, when it was purchased by another funeral director, William D. Johnston. Johnston Funeral Home continues to operate there as of 2013.
The Beers also operated a funeral home at 529 W. Jefferson St. in Philadelphia.
This collection includes records from Johnston Funeral Home and the funeral home that previously operated on the same premises, Beers Funeral Home. It consists primarily of invoices/statements for funerals in alphabetical order by decedent. There are also funeral registers (some indexed) from 1907 to 1965 with decedents' biographical information (such as home address, dates of birth and death, occupation, parents' names, etc.) and funeral-related expense information. There is a small amount of correspondence and a few miscellaneous documents.
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2012-2014 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact Delaware County Historical Society directly for more information.
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Organization
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- Publisher
- Delaware County Historical Society
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Faith Charlton through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact Delaware County Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.