Bodie’s PIONEER FURNITURE

The old Bodie buildings DeChamber, PIONEER FURNITURE, or IOOF HALL, Bodie Miners’ Union and Morge!

The 3.7 acre Bodie Cemetery is fenced. Within the fenced area are three different sections- the Wards Cemetery, the Masonic Cemetery and the Bodie Miners’ Cemetery.

Mr. Henry Ward, an immigrant from England and a cabinet-maker by trade, arrived  in Bodie in 1878. Using his knowlege of carpentry established the Pioneer Furniture Store.  

The Pioneer Furniture Company sold “household small and large items.- like tables, chairs, storage bins.” The plus, was he also delivered household furniture to the newly built houses in Bodie.

Furniture and “undertaking” was a very common combination of Enterprise. Henry Ward expanded on his enterprise in Bodie, by acquiring land for a “Cemetery”.  “Undertaking services”, purchasing glass hearse and building a “Hearse House” to store the carriage shows the extent the “burial services” were needed in the remote, mining community. (Being the “undertaker” Henry Ward handled all the “undertaking services” for the Bodie Miners’ Union.)

Henry Ward also had the financial means to contract a building on Main Street, Bodie. H.H. Ward, PIONEER FURNITURE was on the bottom floor, and the I.O.O.F rented the second floor. The importance is —-the I.O.O.F rented the second floor of his PIONEER FURNITURE building.  IOOF membership used the “rented Hall” before they built the Bodie Miners’ Union Hall next to it.

Today, 150 years later, the I.O.O.F. building has survived the 1932 fire, and still is referred to as the I.O.O.F. Hall. Long forgotten is the “furniture store and undertaking services” that first established , and was the reason for Henry Ward’s business establishment. The only “remembrance to time” is WARDS CEMETERY, which is the where all the I.O.O.F membership is buried.