Dignified, elaborate, and a sure sign of the passenger's status even into the afterlife, the 1916 Winton hearse carried a loved one in style. Built in Cincinnati, Ohio, on a Winton chassis by Crane & Breed, which was the foremost professional coachbuilder of the time. Crane & Breed manufactured and distributed a full line of funerary materials, including coffin nameplates, plumes, undertaker supplies, and caskets. President Abraham Lincoln was interred in a Crane & Breed metal coffin.
Crane & Breed originally distributed other manufacturers' hearses but began making their own in 1867, in the casket factory. In 1912, they began using a Winton Special Six chassis for their professional cars.
Underneath the gleaming black-and-gray exterior of this Winton hearse, it is powered by a 6-cylinder engine with an updraft carburetor, producing 75 horsepower. The hearse and a Winton limousine were originally purchased by a livery company in New Jersey. Stored in a horse barn in the mid-1920s, the hearse was eventually bought by the current owner and extensively restored. A 1914 Crane and Breed advertisement features a poem by F.F. Woodall, summing up their experience with these gorgeous but grim rides:
'I am the Hearse - Death's taxicab; the carriage of the dead! None ride with me but once. Thereafter upon earth - Their riding days are over.'
