Type of site | Funeral services website |
---|---|
Founded | April 26, 1910 |
Owner | Service Corporation International (SCI) |
Founder(s) | Albert Stewart |
Key people | Thomas J. Crawford (CEO) |
Employees | around 5,400 |
Stewart Enterprises, Inc., a provider of funeral and cemetery services, was founded in 1910 and grew to be the second-largest company of its kind in the United States before it was acquired in 2013. [1]
As of 1991, the year it went public, the company was headquartered in Jefferson, Louisiana, and employed nearly 5,400 people in 218 funeral homes and 140 cemeteries in 24 states and Puerto Rico. [2] The company was publicly traded and listed on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol STEI.
In December 2013, Service Corporation International acquired Stewart Enterprises for US$1.4 billion.
Stewart Enterprises was founded in New Orleans in 1910 by Albert Stewart, owner of the Acme Realty Company, when his real estate business acquired the three St. Vincent de Paul Cemeteries and the St. Vincent de Paul Marble Shop, a company that built monuments for the cemeteries. [3] Stewart kept both businesses, and they flourished. By 1931, his sons Frank Sr. and Charles incorporated the business as the Acme Marble & Granite Co. In 1949, the company established Lake Lawn Park Cemetery in New Orleans and developed a large perpetual-care community mausoleum with more than 31,000 crypts. In 1969, under the tutelage of President Frank B. Stewart, Jr. (Albert's grandson), the company purchased the adjoining Metairie Cemetery. [4]
In the 1980s, Stewart expanded from its base in Louisiana and Texas to Florida, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia. Frank B. Stewart, Jr. was chairman, and Thomas J. Crawford was president and chief executive officer. Thomas M. Kitchen was senior executive vice president and chief financial officer. The company went public in 1991, and, over the next several years, expanded to 30 states and 12 countries. In 1997, the firm announced a partnership with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for the building and construction of funeral homes on nine of the Church's cemeteries [5] and management of preneed sales at 11 cemeteries. Stewart Enterprises celebrated its centennial on April 26, 2010.
Stewart's associated businesses and affiliations include the Acme Mausoleum Corporation in Texas and Louisiana; Tributes.com, an online memorial site; and Investor Trust, Inc. (ITI), a wholly owned, Texas-based investment firm for preneed trust and the company's portfolio. Stewart owns a number of historic cemeteries including Metairie Cemetery (Metairie, La.), Royal Palm Memorial Gardens and Funeral Home (West Palm Beach, Fla.), [6] and Wisconsin Memorial Park (Brookfield, Wis.). [7]
Approximately 41 percent of Stewart's business is located in California, Florida and Texas, states that have high proportions of senior citizens.[ citation needed ]
Service Corporation International is an American provider of funeral goods and services as well as cemetery property and services. It is headquartered in Neartown, Houston, Texas, and operates secondary corporate offices in Jefferson, Louisiana. SCI operates more than 1500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries.
Metairie is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, United States, and is part of the New Orleans metropolitan area. With a population of 143,507 in 2020, Metairie is the largest community in Jefferson Parish and was the fifth-largest CDP in the United States. It is an unincorporated area that would have been Louisiana's fourth-largest city behind Shreveport if incorporated.
Metairie Cemetery is a historic cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana, founded in 1872. The name has caused some people to mistakenly presume it is located in Metairie, Louisiana, but it is located within the New Orleans city limits on Metairie Road.
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H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, or Newcomb College, was the coordinate women's college of Tulane University located in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It was founded by Josephine Louise Newcomb in 1886 in memory of her daughter.
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John Milliken Parker Sr., was an American Democratic politician from Louisiana, who served as the state's 37th Governor from 1920 to 1924. He was a friend and admirer of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. He participated in the 1891 New Orleans lynchings.
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George Michael Decker Hahn, was an attorney, politician, publisher and planter in New Orleans, Louisiana. He served twice in Congress during two widely separated periods, elected first as a Unionist to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1862, as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 1865, and later as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1884. He was elected as the 19th Governor of Louisiana, serving from 1864 to 1865 during the American Civil War, when the state was occupied by Union troops. He was the first German-born governor in the United States, and is also claimed as the first ethnic Jewish governor. By that time, he was a practicing Episcopalian.
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The A. B.Freeman School of Business is the business school of Tulane University, located in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The school offers undergraduate programs, a full-time MBA program and other master's programs, a doctoral program, and executive education. It was a charter member of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business in 1916. The school was named in honor of A. B. Freeman, a former chairman of the Louisiana Coca-Cola Bottling Co. and a prominent New Orleans philanthropist. The school is known in the finance community as the publisher of Burkenroad Reports.
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Rouses Markets is a chain of grocery supermarkets in the U.S. states of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
Albert Weiblen (1857–1957) was a German-born American architect and sculptor. His company, the Albert Weiblen Marble and Granite Company, was based in New Orleans and specialized in monuments and burial structures.
The media of New Orleans serve a large population in the New Orleans area as well as southeastern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi.
Charles Turner Howard (1832–1885) was an American businessman who organized the Louisiana State Lottery Company in 1869. This corporation bribed Louisiana lawmakers to enable it to stay in business, and the firm amassed a considerable fortune over the years while Howard led a controversial life. He died at age 53 after a fall from his carriage in Dobbs Ferry, New York, but his family continued his efforts at philanthropy and charitable giving.
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John Robinson Conniff, Sr. was an educator from New Orleans, Louisiana, who served from 1926 to 1928 as the seventh president of Louisiana Tech University in Ruston in Lincoln Parish in North Louisiana.
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