Seattle undertaking establishments changed names and locations often. In the middle of the 19th century, most undertaking establishments were operated from a woodworking shop as a side business.
A woodworker named Oliver C. Shorey (buried at Lake View Cemetery) who came to Seattle in 1861 to build pillars for the territorial university (UW) was the first known undertaker.
A Seattle directory in 1876 lists two undertakers: E. L. Hall and T. S. Russell, who both also owned cabinet making shops. Hall’s undertaking business was sold to Ole Schillestad and T. Coulter. Shorey and Schillestad competed for business. They both applied with the city for burial of the county poor, but Shorey won with a bid of $6.74 per burial.
In 1881, Shorey partnered with L. W. Bonney. In 1885, Schillestad Undertaking went out of business and a new business, Cross and Company (safes and undertakers) was begun. In 1889, Shorey sold his part ownership to G. M. Stewart, so the undertaking establishment changed its name to Bonney and Stewart. In 1903, the same business changed hands again and the name changed once again to Bonney-Watson. Both Bonney and Watson are buried toe-to-toe at Lake View Cemetery.
If you called the number 13 in Seattle in 1892, you would be promptly connected to Bonney and Stewart, as per the Seattle city telephone directory.
Edgar Ray Butterworth started in the funeral directory business in Centralia. He then was hired to run Cross Undertaking (in the 1600 block of Front Street) in 1889 and bought it out in 1892, renaming it E. R. Butterworth and Sons. Butterworth’s four sons followed him, and it became a family business. Butterworth built one of the most modern funeral home on the west coast in 1903 and is recognized as owning the first hearse north of the Columbia River.
During the gold rush days, miners returning from Alaska and laden with gold were frequently robbed and dumped in Elliott Bay. A payment of $50 was offered to the funeral director who would scoop them up and bury them. Stories about funeral coaches racing down the streets of Seattle to try to be the first to pick up these bodies are written in a book by Potts.
Early deaths in the 19th century were commonplace, so the families had many children in the hopes that some would survive to carry on the name and help with farming or chores. A family with 12 children would have maybe two or three survive. The dead were almost always buried and not cremated as most Christians thought it “unclean” or endangered the soul.
In 1905, King County Crematory started. Arthur Wright started the Washington State Cremation Society, which later became Arthur-Wrights Funeral Home. In 1913, a second King County Crematory opened. In 1912 Bonney-Watson Funeral home moved to a different location and had a crematory and columbarium installed. E. R. Butterworth and Sons also had a crematory and columbarium. St. Marks Episcopal cathedral also has a columbarium in the basement.
PHEASANT AND WIGGEN AT BUICK DEALERSHIP. This c. 1930 photograph taken at the Buick dealership in Ballard shows, from left to right, unidentified, Chester Green (driver), Jack L. Pheasant, and Olaf Wiggen. The Wiggen family left Norwegian shores and in 1915 arrived in Seattle. Arcadia Publishing editor Julie Albright’s grandfather J. L. Pheasant started a funeral home, Pheasant-Wiggen Mortuary on Market and Twenty-second in Ballard. He then brought in Norwegian-speaking Wiggen as a business partner. The driver pictured here, Chester Green, opened Green’s Funeral Home in Bellevue some years later. The building where the Buick dealership is located is still standing on Market Street. (Courtesy Julie Albright.)
HOME OF JACK PHEASANT. Pictured is editor Julie Albright’s grandfather Jack L. Pheasant’s home in Ballard. This three-story building contained a funeral home on the bottom floor, living quarters on the second and third floors, and the Ballard telephone exchange in the “turret.” The home was sold to pay for the construction of the Ballard Building on the corner of Market and Twenty-second, as well as the building containing Tully’s today on the opposite corner. In its place today is Washington Mutual. In business, he partnered with Olaf Wiggen in the mortuary business. There is still a Wiggen and Sons Funeral Home and Bayside Crematory in Seattle on Northwest Fifty-seventh Street. (Courtesy Julie Albright.)
COLUMBIA UNDERTAKING COMPANY. This 1930 photograph was taken on Alaska and Rainier in what was once the Lassen home. It shows the new addition on the left side, a new roof, and a 1927 hearse parked in the front. The sign on the front reads, “Columbia Undertaking Co., F. W. Rasmussen.” (Courtesy Rainier Valley Historical Society, No. 93.001.060.)
CROSS UNDERTAKING. This c. 1890 photograph shows Cross Undertaking on 1427 Front Street in Centralia, Washington. Standing in front of it, third from the left, is Bert Butterworth Jr.’s great-great-grandfather Edgar Ray Butterworth. The others are unidentified. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
BUTTERWORTH BUILDING WITH FUNERAL PROCESSION. This is a photograph of a funeral procession parked along the sidewalk in front of the Butterworth Building on First Avenue in downtown Seattle sometime before 1917. (Courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives, No. 31718.)
BUTTERWORTH BUILDING. This full frontal view of the Butterworth Building was taken shortly after it opened in 1903. The building had five floors, with the chapel, family room, and general office on the first floor. The second floor had some private offices and waiting room. The third floor had the casket display room. The first basement floor is where the preparation room was located, as well as the casket trimming room and columbarium and crematory, which were added in 1914. The lower basement held the stables for the horses and coaches. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
BUTTERWORTH FAMILY, C. 1905. This picture was taken under the archway at 1921 First Avenue, Seattle. From left to right are the following: unidentified, Charles Norwood Butterworth (1897–1928), Benjamin Kent Butterworth (1893–1922), Edgar Ray Butterworth (1847–1921), unidentified, Gilbert M. Butterworth, and Nathan Anderson. E. R. Butterworth constructed this building in 1903. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
EDGAR RAY BUTTERWORTH. Butterworth was born in Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts, on March 3, 1847, a son of William Ray and Eliza (Norwood) Butterworth. Butterworth came to Washington to engage in the stock-raising business. He became one of the early businessmen of Seattle, where he founded the undertaking business of E. R. Butterworth and Sons. After a long and lingering illness, he departed this life on January 1, 1921. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
CALL CAR. This is the first call car for transporting the deceased to the funeral home and a utility vehicle behind it. Charley Butterworth is on the far side of the lead vehicle. Edgar Ray Butterworth would write off of his books the names of those who were not able to pay, a splendid illustration of practical charity. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
EARLY AMBULANCE. This photograph shows the interior of an ambulance used between 1900 and 1920. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
FRED BUTTERWORTH. “Fred was born 25 Dec 1877 at Mule Creek, Kansas, the son of Edgar Ray and Maria Louise Butterworth. When Fred was four years old, his father sold his cattle interests and moved to Lewis County in the Washington Territory. In 1892, the family moved to Seattle, and it was here that Fred received his education, and here that he always afterwards made his home. Attending Denny School, he supplemented this with one year of high school, after which he left school to begin his active career, taking a job as a baker’s helper. For a few months he worked in the bakery and then entered his father’s business as an apprentice mortician. His first duties were to take charge of his father’s large stables. Upon his father’s death in 1921, he and his older brother, Gilbert M. Butterworth, shared the partnership of the firm.” (Information courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr., as compiled by Ritajean Butterworth, a granddaughter-in-law of Fred Butterworth.)
FUNERAL COACHES, C. 1905. G. M. Butterworth is closest to the camera on the black coach, which was used for adult men, and Charley Butterworth is closest to the camera on the white coach, which was used for women and children. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
BODIES IN DRAWING ROOM. Here lie the bodies of Col. Carl Ben Eielsen and Earl E. Borland in state in the drawing room of the Butterworth Mortuary. Butterworth was a man of very progressive spirit and it is believed that he was the first to introduce the words “mortuary” and “mortician” in connection with the undertaking business. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
CASKET DISPLAY ROOM. The large display room was filled with carefully selected stocks of fine funeral furnishings to be found in the entire country, ranging in price from the most simple to the magnificent, stately designed solid bronze receptacles. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
COLUMBARIUM. In the Butterworth’s building, the columbarium was located on the first floor. Bert Butterworth Jr., when looking at old photographs, said, “I remember when my cousin, Dave, and I played hide-and-go-seek in the mortuary, the fireside room and slumber room. We had names for all of the rooms like the flag room, but when we ran out of names we just called them A, B, C, D, etc. I went into the fireside room and opened a casket. . . . Oops. That’s not my cousin! We didn’t play hideand-go-seek anymore.” (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
BUTTERWORTH AND SONS STABLES. Pictured around 1915 is the large building that housed the horses, hearses, ambulances, and other livery vehicles. (Courtesy Bert Butterworth Jr.)
CROWN HILL CEMETERY. In 1903, Crown Hill Cemetery was established in 1902 and is operated as a nonsectarian business. When Greenwood Cemetery closed in 1907, some of the early Crown Hill Cemetery burials were removals from Greenwood. (Courtesy Laura McLeod.)