• It's not often a business can claim 125 years of service to a community, but Paetznick-Garness Funeral Home can do just that. Paetznick-Garness Funeral Chapel is one of the oldest businesses in Groton and until recently it has been owned and operated by members of the same family.
• Not only does 2012 mark the funeral home's anniversary, it will also mark a change in the business as the old building comes down and a new building goes up in its place. This is the first of a two part series on the Paetznick-Garness Funeral Home. The first part is on the history of the business.
• Most of the following information comes from South Dakota Funeral Service . . . . A History, a book published by the South Dakota Funeral Directors Association.
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• The Beginning
• Jon Helmuth Paetznick emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1885. He came to SD and settled in Groton. He was a carpenter and cabinet maker by trade and started working for JC Wolfe Furniture and Funeral Director. In 1887, Helmuth branched out on his own and started his own business which for several years was called the Blue Front Furniture and Funeral Director. He soon dropped the Blue Front from his advertising and was known as Paetznick Furniture and Funeral Director.
• Helmuth Paetznick was known and remembered for the handsome matched team of black horses that pulled his hearse. In 1917, he advertised that his fu

neral parlor offered either a horse drawn hearse or a motorized coach. He was one of the first in the area to have a Chalmers Hearse. The first funeral parlor was in the back of the furniture store and was located on Main Street of Groton.
• Alfred "Allie" Paetznick was born in 1900, and was the youngest son of Helmuth and Marie Paetznick. In 1917, Allie joined the army and served briefly during WWI. He returned home and finished High School and took some college credits at Northern Normal and Industrial School in Aberdeen. Then he attended Worsham's School of Mortuary Science in Chicago, Ill. He worked a short time at the Fiksdal Funeral Home in Webster, and then became associated with his father's business in Groton.

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