Friday 15th January 1909

A motorised hearse was used for the first time in the US in a Chicago funeral procession by funeral director H. D. Ludlow & Pearce Undertaking, 659 47th Street. The service was in honor of the late Wilfrid A. Pruyn. Ludlow had commissioned the vehicle to be fabricated from the coach body of a horse-drawn hearse mounted upon an omnibus chassis and powered by a gasoline fuelled internal combustion engine. This marked a sharp break from tradition, as stately horse-drawn hearses had been in use for centuries.