Tunison Funeral Home to celebrate 150th anniversary with open house

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SARATOGA SPRINGS — The city’s oldest funeral home is turning 150 this year, and it’s thanking the community by throwing a celebratory open house from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday, June 5.

Tunison Funeral Home, located at 105 Lake Ave., is inviting members of the community to tour its Victorian building, enjoy refreshments and check out artifacts from its history, including embalming instruments that may have been used in preparing the body of former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

“We’d like everyone to come just to share some memories with us and take a look at the funeral home,” said Dan Warren, who has owned the business since 1994. “We’ve done quite a few renovations here over the past few years and we’d like people to see what we have to offer.”

Office manager Debbie Camarota said the funeral home usually only gets to see people when they’re grieving the loss of a loved one and that “it’ll be nice to have people in here for a good reason.”

“When you think about it, for 150 years — even if you only do 100 funerals a year — that’s 15,000 funerals,” she said. “We’ve touched thousands of families over 150 years.”

Warren and Camarota enlisted the help of the Saratoga Room of the Saratoga Springs Public Library, Brookside Museum and City Historian Mary Ann Fitzgerald to research and verify the history of one of Saratoga’s oldest businesses, which dates back to 1861 when it was founded by Hiram H. Martin Jr. in a room of his father’s wagon shop at the corner of Washington and East Beekman streets.

Martin, who served as Saratoga Springs town supervisor, moved his family and funeral home five times between 1872 and 1883, often residing in the same building as his business. Martin’s journey included brief stops at 175 Broadway, presently home to Shanghai Grill; 18 Lake Ave., currently the home of Fresh & Co. Salon and Spa, and 14-16 Lake Ave., the modern-day site of the law offices of McMahon & Coseo.

The funeral home has been in its current location since 1926, when Arthur C. Kark, who in 1921 purchased the business from Martin’s descendants, moved it to the corner of Lake Avenue and Circular Street.

In 1947, Kark named Mahlon C. Tunison Jr., who served as an embalmer in the Grave Registration Service during World War II, as his partner. The business has been called Tunison Funeral Home since 1978.

The funeral home has located all but one of its funeral ledgers from its century-and-a-half of history, and many will be on display during the anniversary event. Continued...

Alongside the ledgers lies a set of circa 1860 embalming instruments that Kark purchased around 1920 for $175 from undertaker Ebenezer Holmes, who embalmed Grant’s body following the former president’s 1885 death at Mount McGregor.

Which begs the question: Are the instruments Kark purchased the ones Holmes embalmed Grant with?

“We can’t verify it through any source at this time,” Warren said. “But we like to tell the story that way.”

Click to enlarge

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The city’s oldest funeral home is turning 150 this year, and it’s thanking the community by throwing a celebratory open house from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday, June 5.

Tunison Funeral Home, located at 105 Lake Ave., is inviting members of the community to tour its Victorian building, enjoy refreshments and check out artifacts from its history, including embalming instruments that may have been used in preparing the body of former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

“We’d like everyone to come just to share some memories with us and take a look at the funeral home,” said Dan Warren, who has owned the business since 1994. “We’ve done quite a few renovations here over the past few years and we’d like people to see what we have to offer.”

Office manager Debbie Camarota said the funeral home usually only gets to see people when they’re grieving the loss of a loved one and that “it’ll be nice to have people in here for a good reason.”

“When you think about it, for 150 years — even if you only do 100 funerals a year — that’s 15,000 funerals,” she said. “We’ve touched thousands of families over 150 years.”

Warren and Camarota enlisted the help of the Saratoga Room of the Saratoga Springs Public Library, Brookside Museum and City Historian Mary Ann Fitzgerald to research and verify the history of one of Saratoga’s oldest businesses, which dates back to 1861 when it was founded by Hiram H. Martin Jr. in a room of his father’s wagon shop at the corner of Washington and East Beekman streets.

Martin, who served as Saratoga Springs town supervisor, moved his family and funeral home five times between 1872 and 1883, often residing in the same building as his business. Martin’s journey included brief stops at 175 Broadway, presently home to Shanghai Grill; 18 Lake Ave., currently the home of Fresh & Co. Salon and Spa, and 14-16 Lake Ave., the modern-day site of the law offices of McMahon & Coseo.

The funeral home has been in its current location since 1926, when Arthur C. Kark, who in 1921 purchased the business from Martin’s descendants, moved it to the corner of Lake Avenue and Circular Street.

In 1947, Kark named Mahlon C. Tunison Jr., who served as an embalmer in the Grave Registration Service during World War II, as his partner. The business has been called Tunison Funeral Home since 1978.

The funeral home has located all but one of its funeral ledgers from its century-and-a-half of history, and many will be on display during the anniversary event.

Alongside the ledgers lies a set of circa 1860 embalming instruments that Kark purchased around 1920 for $175 from undertaker Ebenezer Holmes, who embalmed Grant’s body following the former president’s 1885 death at Mount McGregor.

Which begs the question: Are the instruments Kark purchased the ones Holmes embalmed Grant with?

“We can’t verify it through any source at this time,” Warren said. “But we like to tell the story that way.”

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