Frantz, Henry L.

Submitted by Mike Miller

Frantz & Schoen. The vocation of an undertaker is essentially a very delicate one, and it involves for its successful prosecution peculiarly important qualifications which but comparatively few individuals possess, audit is only by long experience as well as natural aptitude that a man is able to discharge his duty in that relation to the entire and unqualified satisfaction of those most interested. Among the prominent houses engaged in this line of business is that of Frantz & Schoen, of 155-156 North Peters street, and 35-39 Elysian Fields street. They became the successors of Jacob Klees (deceased) on March 1, 1874, and bought out John Grayer in 1885. Both establishments were among the oldest in this city and have been in successful operation ever since, and have done the largest under taking business in this city, not specially in the line of carriage business, but the largest number of interments. They keep on hand a large assortment of caskets and coffins of all kinds and styles. Five hearses are always in readiness, fifteen to twenty carriages and from thirty-five to forty horses. All orders for funerals receive their personal attention. They give special attention to embalming and shipping bodies. They are already reaping their experience and careful attention to the details and duties of their vocation known by almost the entire community, as the popular firm of Frantz & Schoen, funeral directors and embalmers. Henry L. Frantz was born in Alsace-Loraine September 8, 1847, and at the age of ten years came to the United States with his parents, and obtained the greater part of his literary education in New Orleans. In 1860, when still a youth, he learned the carriage-woodwork trade, and later embarked in that business for himself. While thus employed he became acquainted with Mr. Jacob Schoen, who was then in the carriage and livery business, and in March, 1874, they became associated and have since been in business. Mr. Frantz is in every respect a public-spirited and useful citizen and has been the organizer and promoter of many benevolent associations. He is also a member of about twenty benevolent associations in New Orleans, takes an active part in church affairs, and is an attendant of St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran church. He is also interested in the Bethlehem Orphan asylum, of which he is director and treasurer, was a councilman at large from 1882 to 1884, when Behan was mayor, and was president of Louisiana Fire Company No. 10 for two years, and treasurer for sixteen years, until the Volunteer Fire department was abolished in 1892. He has been treasurer of the Young Men's Benevolent association for a number of years, and held that responsible position in five or six different associations at the same time, is vice-president of the Funeral Directors' association of the state of Louisiana, and is president of the local Funeral Directors' association of New Orleans. He was director and vice-president for two years of the Southern Brewing company and an active member of the board of directors of the City Park Improvement association, also vice-president of the Orleans Manufacturing company, which supplies the largest portion of this southern section with casket. and coffins made here. He has always taken an active part in all public enterprises for the promotion of home industries. Mr. Frantz was married October 20, 1860, to Johanna E. Waldo, and as he has no children of his own he has reared and educated six half orphans of his own immediate relatives. Mr. Frantz and wife have done some extensive traveling, having visited almost every large city in this country and Canada. In 1800, from May to September, he made a trip to Europe in company with his wife, and visited his birthplace, Sarr Union, in Alsace-Loraine, when they visited most all the important cities in Europe, going by the Red Star Line steamship company, landing first in Antwerp, Belgium, and spent from six to fifteen days in the different large cities--Brussells, battlefield of Waterloo, Cologne (Kohln), a trip up the river Rhine to Mainz, Strassburg, Bassell, Stuttgart, Munich, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, Potsdam, Hanover, Paris, London to Liverpool, when they came home by the Inman line steamship company.

Biographical and Historical Memoires of Louisiana, (vol. 1), pP. 422-423. Published by the Goodspeed Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892.