Lately I’ve been on a quest, one I began some years ago but this time with a different objective. Originally, I wanted an early picture of the funeral home in Savannah, the three story brick one that faced Main Street and was my next door neighbor growing up. It was pretty convenient for my parents since they could just walk across the parking lot to work, and I can still remember when they dug the basement out from under the building, but I knew it had been a house before it was a funeral home . . . and I wanted desperately to know what that house looked like.

I found it one day, after having seen it dozens of times over the years—an old photograph in the back of an old album—a stately Victorian beauty at a slightly cocky angle (my grandfather must have been feeling artistic when he took it). The bay window on the front and the location of the chimney finally gave away its secret and I was elated with my find.

Now my quest goes further back in time. I want to know exactly where the very first Shackelford Funeral Home was located. I know it was downtown in Savannah and I know the building is still there. I just don’t know which one it is. Some have told me it was upstairs over what was once McDougal Drugs. But then I was told Dr. Whitlow had his office in that same space in the 1930s . . . which is exactly when the funeral home would have been there. If that’s the case and they shared the second floor that just seems a little depressing. Would I really want to use a doctor that shared office space with a funeral home?

Back then most of the actual funeral work took place away from the business. The embalming was done at the home of the deceased as was the dressing and casketing. The body generally remained at home for the visitation with the funeral being held there as well if it wasn’t moved to a church. So an office area and a selection room of sorts might really be all that was needed when my great-grandparents hung out their shingle in 1926, wherever said shingle might have hung.

In all my searching I’ve uncovered a wealth of information. For the longest time my generation believed we started the funeral home in Savannah, but that isn’t the case. It was purchased from E. K. Churchwell whose family also owned the picture show and the general store. I even found the agreement Mr. Churchwell signed promising not to make or sell caskets for the next ten years. And I found my great-grandfather’s draft registration card which finally solved one of the greatest mysteries of our time—how he spelled his middle name (it’s Ernest, in case you’re interested). Pouring over scanned copies of the Savannah Courier gave me the announcement of the funeral home’s opening under our name. It confirmed that they had purchased the house on Main Street from the DeFord family to serve as their residence; it was only after my great-grandfather’s death that it was converted to the funeral home. I read his obituary and the glowing tributes written by several very kind folks, including a resolution by the Savannah Cemetery Association, on whose board he served. I even found a copy of the invitation to the open house in the newly renovated facility, held on August 12th and 13th of 1939.

But guess what? No one seemed to use actual street addresses in the 1920s and 30s. Every piece of mail and every advertisement I’ve found gives their phone numbers (125 during the day and 85 at night) and nothing else. No pictures of the establishment. No clue as to where it might actually have resided before moving down the street—or up, depending on your perspective.

And you know what’s really sad? There was a time when I could easily have asked my grandfather and he could easily have shared the entire history. He could have pointed to the very building and told me exactly what part of what space they occupied and what made them decide to convert a Victorian home into a brick and mortar, modern for its time funeral facility with living quarters for my great-grandmother on the second floor. But I never asked and now I will have to find my proof on my own. A picture of Main Street in the 1920s or 30s, a shot of McDougal Drugs with a little sign somewhere that says Shackelford Funeral Home . . . anything that definitively proves the verbal history others have provided.

The older I get, the more I want to know about what came before me, but I made the same terrible mistake so many others have made. I didn’t care to ask the questions until there was no one left to answer. Too often our history dies with us, growing fainter and fainter as the generations pass until there is no one left to tell the stories. I want to document as much of my past as I can because some day, in the not too distant future (relatively speaking), I will become a part of that history and the knowledge I might possess will be interred with my remains, just as it was with my parents and their parents and the generations stretching back through the ages. Death not only has the power to take life, it can also obscure all that came before . . . if we choose to let it.

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