Furniture Companies

Elias Jensen worked as a cabinet maker and then as a member of the Co-op carpenter crew, helping erect some of Brigham City’s public buildings. In 1879, he purchased land just south of the Horsley block and started a furniture shop. At first, he and his partner Niels Dedrickson made most of the furniture but found that customers wanted more modern pieces. The partnership dissolved but Jensen continued to sell furniture for 21 years.1Lydia Walker Forsgren, History of Box Elder County, (Brigham City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1937), 121-122. In the early 1880s, J. C. Nielson, another Co-op cabinet shop worker, took over the cabinet shop and continued to make furniture in a building located at Main and Forest. He realized that local buyers found homemade furniture obsolete, so opted to sell imported furniture. This required more capital, so Nielson asked Ola N. Stohl, A. T. Jorgensen, and Henry Stander to become partners in a new firm. When Nielson moved from Brigham City in 1897, Stohl purchased his holdings and officially opened Stohl Furniture Company in the old cabinet shop on August 11, 1897. He continued as manager until 1898, at which time his son, Lorenzo N. Stohl, took over management.2Forsgren, 121.

“A new department of embalming was added in 1899. Lorenzo Stohl received the first certificate as licensed embalmer every issued by the State of Utah. The company enjoyed a steady growth from that time on. In 1901, a horse-drawn hearse was added to their equipment.”3Forsgren, 123.

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