ISLAND FALLS, Maine — If antique tools once used to preserve human remains fascinate you, then a newly opened museum in Island Falls may be right up your alley.
The Rest In Peace Museum officially opened its doors Thursday at 56 Sherman St. in the former home of Bowers Funeral Home.
The museum, documenting the history of morticians and funeral techniques used over the past 100 years, is believed to be the first of its kind in the state and perhaps one of only a handful in the entire country.
Owned and operated by Tony Bowers, a fourth-generation mortician in southern Aroostook County, the vast majority of the collection are items that have been in his family since his great-grandfather Russell Eugene Bowers opened for business in 1900.
“We have all these items so why not share them with the public?” Bowers said. “We’d like to educate people and take them back in time to see how things used to be done. This is history and needs to be preserved.”
Curious patrons got a preview of the rooms Thursday afternoon during the official unveiling of the oddity attraction. The collection includes the tuberculosis caskets, embalming fluid jars, cooling boards that were once used as early embalming tables and a variety of historical tools used in the funeral business dating back more than 100 years.
The museum even features a human skeleton once used in a medical school classroom.
One of the rooms has been designed to replicate a bedroom from a century ago, when individuals often died in their own homes. Morticians were required to bring all of the gear needed to prepare a body on site.
“Embalming was often done right in the kitchen,” Bowers said.
The museum became registered as a non-profit in March. It opened to the public until Aug. 4, coinciding with the town of Island Falls’ 150th celebration. There is no charge for admission, but donations are accepted.
Annette Stevens of Crystal was one of the first visitors to the museum.
“I had heard it was full of really interesting items and wanted to check it out,” Stevens said. “I don’t really find it all that morbid. It’s history.”
Carmel Bowers, Tony’s wife, will conduct tours of the facility and hopes to open a classroom space in the basement of the museum which can be used for monthly courses featuring topics like death and dying, anatomy, biology and embalming processes.
“Women often did a lot of the work preparing a body,” Carmel Bowers said. “That was up until the Civil War, when chemicals started being used to preserve bodies to be shipped home to families.”
Bowers Funeral Home has a lengthy history in the community of Island Falls, Sherman and Patten. The Bowers family opened its first funeral home in Sherman in 1900. Bowers’ father expanded the business to Island Falls in 1947 and Patten in 1958.
Tony Bowers opened another branch in Houlton in 1995 in the former St. Mary’s convent on Water Street. The Patten and Sherman facilities closed in 1996. In 2020, he opened a funeral home in Presque Isle.