Main content
A.C. Bishop Funeral Home registers
Notifications
Held at: Historical Society of the Phoenixville Area [Contact Us]204 Church St., Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, 19460
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Historical Society of the Phoenixville Area. 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
The A.C. Bishop Funeral Home, located in Phoenixville, Chester County, Pennsylvania, was owned and operated by three generations of the Bishop family. Around 1855, George M. Bishop (1836-1914), a cabinet maker, opened a furniture store in Phoenixville. Several years later, in 1862, he took over the business of Andrew Reed, an undertaker for whom Bishop had previously worked. The business included a funeral home and store where caskets and other furnishings related to funeral services were sold. The Bishop funeral home and furniture store were both very successful, operating for over 100 years.
George Bishop's son, Alonzo C. Bishop (1858-1949), also a cabinet maker, took over both the furniture store and funeral home after his father's death in 1914. A.C. Bishop's sons, Francis A. and Cooper T. Bishop, succeeded their father as proprietors.
Bibliography:
News clippings found in collection.
This collection consists of over 30 funeral home registers, 1862-1911 and 1931-1968. The amount of biographical information provided in the registers for each decedent varies by year, though most entries include cause of death, birth and death dates, residence, occupation, names of immediate family members, and funeral information such as cost of services, coffin records, and burial location. The registers from 1890 to 1968 have been photocopied, and access copies are available for on-site researchers.
Accession 2010.014
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 Historical Society of the Phoenixville Area directly for more information.
People
Organization
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Historical Society of the Phoenixville Area
- 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
-
Contact Historical Society of the Phoenixville Area for information about accessing this collection.