Oscar the fischer suddenly developed a case of acute appendicitis in September of 1943 and died at the age of 63.

 Oscar Fischer, Undertaker (1905).  According to legend, a speech delivered in Cincinnati was one of the reasons Oscar Fischer wound up in Cullman.  The speech was a recruitment talk by Col. Cullman to entice German immigrants to join his new colony in Alabama.

Carl Fischer was born near Berlin, Germany in 1836.  The Fischer family left Bremen, Germany in 1869 and landed in New York. 

 From there they moved to Minnesota where the family engaged in farming.  Carl found success up north, but the cold weather disagreed with him.  

In 1888, Carl, his wife, and three of his sons moved to Cullman.  One of the sons was Carl’s youngest, named Oscar.

Carl wasted no time in establishing a new farm in Cullman County about a mile east of the city. 

 There, he established a dairy and set about improving his stock with the purchase of a Holstein bull at the Alabama State Fair in Birmingham in 1890.  He also began raising Angora goats and sheep.

Carl Fischer continued to manage his farm until his death at the age of 65 in 1901.  His wife Henrietta followed him in death in 1914.  They were both buried in the Cullman City Cemetery.

While he continued to farm on the side, Oscar chose an altogether different occupation.  In September of 1904, he returned to Cullman from Nashville where he completed a course in embalming.

  Fischer opened a business house opposite J.R. Griffin’s store on 3rd Avenue.  The new store featured a complete line of coffins, caskets, and burial robes.  A new hearse was ordered and was on the way to the new establishment.

That same year, Oscar married Lena Buchmann.  Lena was daughter of John Henry and Margaret Boeger Buchmann.  The Buchmann’s were a successful and influential family in early Cullman history.

Besides his business house opposite Griffin’s on 3rd Avenue where he sold his undertaking supplies, Fischer also maintained an office in J.H. Karter’s store nearby.

Capitalizing on his success and reputation as an undertaker, Fischer made his first run for county coroner in 1908 on the Republican ticket.  However, he lost to chemist and druggist Albert Hoeppner by 144 votes.  In 1912, he ran again, but this time lost to Dr. Philip Hartung.

Fischer ran unopposed for coroner the third time in 1916 and won in the year when the Democrats lost every candidate in the race except for O.S. Roden, who kept his post as Clerk of the Circuit Court.

The 1910s were successful years for Fischer.  Not only was he elected coroner in 1916, his undertaking business expanded.

  In 1911, Oscar tore down the old wood frame house on the corner of 3rd Street and 3rd Avenue and contracted with noted Cullman architect W.A. Schlosser to build a new brick building on the same corner.

After investing so much money in the new building by 1913, with a grin, Fischer complained he might go bankrupt if more people didn’t die in Cullman.  

In coming years, Oscar leased part of the building to Well’s Drug Store.  During WWII, the building was home to the Home and Auto Store, managed by Bruce and Dwight Pylant.  The Pylant’s sold Firestone products.

Outside his business interests, Oscar Fischer had two other great passions:  cars and dogs.

About 1915, Fischer built a large garage just down the street from his undertaking establishment.  For many years afterwards, it was the Cullman Studebaker dealership.  

In the 1920s, Oscar allowed the city of Cullman to keep an International Harvester fire truck in one of the garage bays to service fire calls on that side of the city.  Fischer staffed the garage 24 hours a day which saved a lot of time when the occasional fire alarm was turned in.

Also in the 1920s, Fischer opened a satellite undertaking business in Hanceville.  It was managed by Ed Wenzel.

Incidentally, Fischer twice briefly served as Cullman County Sheriff.  The first time was July of 1919 when he was called to fill in for John Sparks after he was killed in the line of duty. 

 The second time was about a year later when Sheriff Graves was jailed following the killing of a moonshiner.  Both stints as sheriff lasted only a few days or weeks until the Governor appointed others to fill out the unexpired terms.

Oscar’s fondness for fox hunting and dogs came together to his detriment once in 1927.  In February of 1927 one of his dogs went mad and bit him.  

Fischer was forced to undergo a series of painful rabies shots.  To make matters worse, the same thing happened with another dog in May of 1928, resulting in another round of treatments.

Oscar and Lena Fischer had three children:  Lorine (1905), Erwin “Scoop” (1906) and Alene (1908).  Both of the girls suffered untimely deaths.  The first to go was Aline.

Alene Fischer was the popular valedictorian of the 1926 Cullman County High School graduates. 

 One Monday morning in June of 1926, Aline traveled to Hartselle to visit the principal of the Morgan County High School.  She was to teach history at the school in the fall.

After returning from Hartselle, she complained of a backache and went to the family medicine chest and grabbed a bottle of pills.

  Instead of pain pills, Aline mistakenly swallowed some bichloride of mercury tablets.  Normally such tablets were used as a topical antiseptic and disinfectant.  Taken orally, the pills were lethal.

Not long after taking the deadly pills, Alene suffered an agonizing death in her father’s arms.  Her last words were, “Oh, Daddy, I believe that I’m dying.”  She was 17.

Lorine Fischer finished college at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.  She taught English and History in schools across North Alabama.  She also loved to travel.  She married Howard Speake Gibson in 1934.

Lorine Fischer Gibson was killed when she stepped in front of a southbound L&N freight train at the depot at Hartselle in August of 1948.

  The Morgan County coroner ruled the death was suicide.  Reportedly, Lorine was in ill health some months prior to her death.  She was 43-years-old.

Oscar Fischer’s only son was Ervin Frederick “Scoop” Fischer.  He followed his father in the profession of embalming.  He studied at Nashville and passed the Alabama Board of Embalmers in April of 1931. 

 Scoop joined the Navy in 1941 and was stationed in the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska.  After the War, he farmed and was the owner of a garage in Cullman.

In 1932, Oscar Fischer allied with the Service Insurance Company and worked with them in selling and servicing burial insurance policies.  Over the next few years, the company evolved into the Brown-Service Funeral Company.  

Fischer entered the Republican race for coroner again in 1936.  This time he lost to Grady Moss by a margin of almost 3 to 1.  Oscar made a final bid for coroner in 1940.  He was defeated by Bill Drinkard 5,541 to 3,138

When Lecy Doil Tanner of Holly Pond died in February of 1940, the roads were almost impassable.  January of 1940 was one of the coldest and iciest months in memory. 

 Fifteen inches of snow was on the ground in late January and temperatures at night were in the single digits.  When Lecy died in early February, the roads had just barely begun to thaw out.  They were a muddy and icy mess.

Motorized vehicles were out of the question, so to carry Tanner to her final resting place, Oscar dusted off his 1905 horse drawn hearse which had remained in storage for the past 21 years.  Lecy’s grandson, George, supplied a pair of fine gray horses.

  In that manner, Mrs. Charles Sanders Tanner was elegantly conveyed to the New Hope #2 Baptist Church Cemetery.  It was probably the last time a horse drawn hearse was ever used in Cullman County.

In 1942, Brown-Service bought out the Drinkard Funeral Home burial policies as well as the funeral home business and equipment of Oscar Fischer in Cullman and in Hanceville. 

 Fischer effectively retired, but remained employed by the company as a “special representative and special undertaker” when he was called upon for his services.

However, just a few months later, Oscar the fischer  suddenly developed a case of acute appendicitis in September of 1943 and died at the age of 63.

Oscar’s wife, Lena Buchmann Fischer, lived for many more years and died at the age of 87 in January of 1968.  Erwin Frederick “Scoop” Fischer, the last of the Oscar Fischer family, died in February of 1978.  

All of the Oscar Fischer family were buried in the Cullman City Cemetery.

Oscar Fischer’s legacy can be found in dozens of Cullman County cemeteries.  Often a family could not afford an elaborate stone monument.  

Instead, they never replaced the simple cast concrete flat monument with a name and some dates, provided by Oscar Fischer, whose name is advertised along with that of the deceased.