Person Record
Metadata
Name |
Currie, Thomas (Tommy) |
Othernames |
also known as Tom Currie |
Places of residence |
Priceville area, Artemesia Township, Grey County |
Nationality |
Canadian |
Notes |
The Grey Roots Museum collection has a horse-drawn hearse. It was driven up until 1952 by Tommy Currie, who has recorded his memories of the vehicle in an interview for the South Grey Museum, recorded by Margaret Turney, in 1993. The hearse was a horse-drawn sleigh, used exclusively in winter. Bereaved customers would turn up at Watson's to pick out a casket for their dear departed and Watson would call Tom Currie. Loading the empty casket onto the hearse, along with materials needed for laying out the body, plus chairs and other items required for the funeral, Currie would hitch up the team. He said that he had three teams: two teams of bay horses and one team of black horses. The blacks would usually be used for the funeral itself, but for this first trip out he'd usually use one of the bay teams. On reaching the farm where the death had taken place, Watson and Currie would prepare the body before placing it in the casket, doing all the usual undertaking tasks such as, washing the body, shaving the men, fixing the women's hair, and dressing the body in clean clothes. When asked whether family members helped with this, Currie was emphatic. "No!" he says, " They were usually on the other side of a closed door." Currie also admits that depending on how long the person had been bed-ridden, coupled with the fresh air in the house and the degree of personal care that the patient had experienced, laying out the body could sometimes be an unpleasant and odorous task. After transferring the body to the casket and loading pails of cleaning materials back in the hearse Currie and Watson would return to Priceville. On its second trip, the hearse transported the casket with the body to the funeral site - be it a church or back to the home farm for burial there - often carrying the pallbearers as well. Currie has many tales of storms and blocked roads. Of motors - as he called cars or automobiles - as well as other teams falling by the wayside, when the roads became impassable. He was proud of his teams and took pleasure in his driving ability, in spite of day-trips which turned into night-trips, and driving in the dark with the horses slipping into holes in the snow, crowding one another, and moving along the road in zero visibility. In one story Tommy describes a drifted road so bad that one of the horses was walking several feet higher than the other; the hearse was slanted at a perilous pitch and all on board moved to the high side to balance the (casket) load. In spite of the bad weather, Currie was forced to insist the pall bearers get off entirely and walk the rest of the way to the church. Often a horse-drawn sleigh hearse had removable runners and could be transformed into a summer vehicle with the addition of wheels; however, this hearse was kept just for winter driving. Watson is said to have had a 1928 Hupmobile hearse as well as a 1932 Buick nine-passenger car to use in summer. According to the book Priceville: Its Roots/Routes gas pumps began to spring up in Priceville in the late 1920s, but the main roads only began to be plowed for wheeled vehicles in 1943. It wasn't until 1950 that the majority of winter roads were cleared of snow. Apparently mail carriers still used horses both summer and winter until the mid-1940s. Tom Currie believed he was the only person to drive this sleigh hearse until its use stopped in 1952. Rural roads in Grey are now more accessible in winter-time. The names of Tom Currie and Mrs. Tom Currie are recorded on a church-related quilt that is at Grey Roots. Her brother "Loyd" (Lloyd Vause) is also recorded on the same quilt block. |
Occupation |
Driver and assistant for William Watson's Undertaking business / Funerals |
Publications |
SPLIT RAIL COUNTRY - Volume 2 (page 32) about the McNeil Cemetery and Watson's Hearse SPLIT RAIL COUNTRY: A HISTORY OF ARTEMESIA TOWNSHIP, p. 240 (Vause family history mentions Sadie Currie) |
Spouse |
Sarah Elizabeth (Sadie) Vause, m. 19__ |
