Two Historical Society of Cecil County volunteers, Billie Todd and Evelyn Wekke, are pouring over aging business ledgers from the Grant
Funeral Home of Cherry Hill. Scanning the old, yellowing pages they meticulously extract information on deaths from the undertaker’s account books, cataloging information about the people whom W. J. Grant and son buried, including names, family ties and key biographical data.
Evelyn reads the fading handwriting penned in these volumes by the mortician from the late 1880s until the 1920s, as the Society’s resident genealogist, Billie, inputs the data into a spreadsheet. Once they finish this task, one that requires painstaking care, and attention to detail, they will digitize the images of these century old pages that document the services Grant provided for the burials and their work will be made available on the Society’s website. This efficient team has done other demonstration projects of this nature, linking web-based data with the high quality images. Their effort makes valuable family history research materials accessible to patrons of the Historical Society.
Cherry Hill had two funeral homes. William J Grant, the founder of the one business, worked as a cabinet maker and undertaker, engaging in that business for over 40-years. After the elder Mr. Grant died in April 1887, his son, Clark S., continued the business until the 1930s. When he passed away in November 1938, the Cecil Democrat said he had retired from the business in 1936, having worked in the profession for nearly 60 years. Alfred T. Abernathy, the other undertaker, died in 1934. His wife continued the business, according to newspaper accounts.
- Evelyn Wekke and Billie Todd work on another volume of the Grant Funeral Home Books