Bellamy Funeral Home

Funeral businesses came out of either hardware stores or furniture stores, or livery sales, one of the three,” said James Southerland, funeral director of Mayes Ward-Dobbins Funeral Home in Marietta.The Dobbins family began in the furniture business, with John S. Dobbins and Albert Dobbins establishing Dobbins Funeral Home in 1923 on Cherokee Street, adjacent to where the current facility is today. In 1929, Mayes Ward Funeral Home was started by Mayes Ward and his brother, Harvey Ward, according to the Mayes Ward-Dobbins website, with the business starting on Lawrence Street before moving to Church Street three years later.“Mayes Ward and Dobbins, they were about a block apart,” Southerland added. The two funeral homes remained open until January 1, 1990, when both merged into the Church Street location.The rich history of the long-running funeral home and others within the county was one of the reasons why museum officials chose the topic for their monthly program. Of course, the month itself also played a factor.“Having the pictures in our collection of some of the funeral homes and a little bit of that, we’ve always been kind of fascinated with the evolution of how the businesses were tied together. We wanted to do something about the funeral homes for a while, so we thought, ‘Why not tie it into Halloween?’” said Jan Galt, the museum’s director of operations. “But I think it turned out to be a good one, because as James said, there are so many family connections and also through the funeral process, they get to know the families, and there is a lot of history to tie into that.”Another one of the event’s guest speakers was Eric White, who serves as funeral director and embalmer at A.S. Turner & Sons in Decatur, but in his quarter of a century in the industry has worked at Mayes Ward Dobbins, Southern Cremations & Funerals at Cheatham Hill in Marietta, Castellaw Funeral Home in Smyrna and Bellamy Funeral Home in Hiram. Among the insights he shared were changes in trends in the...