Pueblo Chieftan on Pueblo's Hearse

James Bartolo

Pueblo Chieftain USA TODAY NETWORK

A mysterious artifact stored by the Pueblo Heritage Museum for many years has grown into an international research effort, just in time for spooky season.

The artifact is a late 19th-century horse-drawn hearse — a carriage that little is known about other than the fact it may have transported coffins and caskets long before coming into the museum’s possession. A manufacturer’s plate on the hearse has led to the discovery that the hearse was manufactured by Ignaz Nisslmüller of Linz, Austria.

“To have one that was built completely in Austria here, for some reason, is really rare,” said John Wendt, executive director of the Pueblo County Historical Society and Heritage Museum. “Most hearses in North America were built here, for the church that was using it.”

The Pueblo Heritage Museum and In the Shadows Paranormal will have the hearse on display at the museum during its National Ghost Hunting Day

fundraising event on Sept. 26. The event will include an 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. ghost investigation and a limited-space fullnight experience from 11:30 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Nisslmüller manufactured carriages “for export,” according to old advertisements, but it remains a mystery how this Linz-manufactured hearse made its way to Pueblo County.

Nisslmüller died in 1894 of tuberculosis at approximately 49 years old. The wooden black hearse decorated with Catholic iconography is estimated to have been built between the 1870s and Nisslmüller’s death.

After approximately three decades in the Pueblo Heritage Museum’s possession, the hearse was finally pulled out of a Downtown Pueblo storage shed and into the sunlight on Sept. 18, 2026 — the first day of the 32nd annual Pueblo Chile & Frijoles Festival.

Before the hearse was the museum’s, it was part of the carriage collection of the late Katherine Keating. Keating, a U.S. Navy servicewoman from Pueblo, began collecting for her KK Ranch & Carriage Museum in Beulah following her retirement in the 1970s. The Pueblo Heritage Museum is in the process of researching exactly how Keating obtained the hearse.

“We even tried researching who the undertakers were at the time and if they might have brought it over,” Pueblo Heritage Museum Board Member and In the Shadows Paranormal Founder Gail Conners said. “Or one of the labor groups associated with CF&I could have joined together to harvest their money to bring something like this over if they wanted it, but we don’t know how (Keating) got it.”

Pueblo researchers are working in collaboration with Archiv der Stadt Linz, the city archives of Linz, and archivist Sophie Schlitter to find answers about the mysterious hearse.

John Wendt, executive director of the Pueblo County Historical Society and Heritage Museum, left, and Pueblo Heritage Museum board member Gail Conners stand next to a late 19th-century Austrian carriage hearse, one of the historic artifacts preserved in the museum’s collection. ZACHARY ALLEN/THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

The Pueblo Heritage Museum also is hopeful that visitors to the upcoming National Ghost Hunting Day event can help solve the mystery too.

Pueblo Chieftain reporter James Bartolo can be reached at JBartolo@ gannett.com. S