FINNEY FUNERAL SERVICE HISTORY
1901: Charles Finney apprenticed to David Storrer, furniture supplier and undertaker, age seven.
1905: Mr Storrer sells undertaking business to Charles Finney and David Armitage; becomes Finney & Armitage on St John Street.
1921: Mr Armitage dies on the job and Charles Finney takes on the business with his wife and three sons, John, Kenneth and Geoffrey.
1931: It becomes C.hsT. Finney & Sons, moves to Brisbane Street and horseless hearses are introduced.
1962: Memorial chapel built on Cameron Street, one of the first in state, followed by offices in 1980.
1976: Kenneth buys out his brothers.
1990: Kenneth and his son Andrew move business to Carr Villa site.
WHEN funerals were an event that stopped Launceston and a procession of the grieving dressed all in black followed the hearse, Finney Funeral Service was there.
For just over a century the Finney name has been associated with funerals in Launceston and the North.
Yet from April, Andrew Finney and his brother Robert, the third generation of the family, will no longer be associated with the funeral home next door to Carr Villa Memorial Park, which has been sold to Graham Family Funerals in Hobart.
Andrew Finney says it will be sad to see the family connection end but his children have chosen other career paths.
``It is a bit sad, it's the end of an era but that's just the way it goes,'' Mr Finney said.
``I was very lucky in that another family-oriented business from Hobart, Graham's, came up and offered to buy me out.''
Mr Finney has been working in the business since 1985 but also on holidays before that and started by building coffins and learning the ins-and-outs of the whole operation.
He said funerals had changed considerably since he started.
``When I first started it was very simple,'' Mr Finney said.
``You're either an Anglican, Catholic, Uniting, Presbyterian and that minister would come in, you'd have choice of three hymns and eulogies and that was it.
``Now, it's more of an event, it's more personal and the world of the celebrant. Back in those days you didn't have the civil celebrant, the nearest you could get would be a Salvation Army minister but now the majority are with celebrants.''
Mr Finney said they had always done as much as they could to carry out the last wishes of clients, including organising a flyover by planes when one pilot was buried and ensuring a life-size horse mannequin dressed in the former jockey's colours was on display. One coffin was a boat and others have been painted in football colours.
He said one funeral service saw them remove all the chapel pews, the room decorated with gum trees and the service conducted with guests sitting around the coffin on the floor in a circle.
He said he had buried many notable people but many more lesser known have had much larger funerals because of who they were to their community.
Mr Finney said one of the largest would have had more than 800 attendees.
The family has retained records of every funeral service it has conducted dating back to a Ms Webster on October 4, 1910.
Mr Finney said its average had been about 500 funerals a year since 1953 but it was now creeping closer to 600 and the business had 17 staff on call at all hours.
Mr Finney said the family's last day would be just before Easter.
He said all pre-arranged funerals would be honoured by Graham Family Funerals.
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