Old Bob, the Funeral Horse - Sanford, FL - Animal Memorials on Waymarking.com

The only non-human buried in Sanford’s Lakeview cemetery is a horse named Old Bob. This was the horse that pulled the hearse and it was Bob that carried most of the humans in this cemetery on their final ride. Old Bob, a large white horse, pulled the hearse for T. J. Miller’s Funeral Home and it was said that he could find his way to the cemetery without a driver. Old Bob was born in 1877 and had several owners, including another funeral home before being acquired in 1891 by T. J. Miller. He spent a total of 28 years pulling hearses until he was retired to pasture in 1913. Old Bob died in 1914 and was buried in Lakeview Cemetery in the shade of an old oak tree. When Bob’s original stone marker was vandalized, Gene Hunt, owner of a monument company, donated a new granite stone. The original marker is now on exhibit at the Sanford Museum. Bob’s grave is one most popular in the cemetery. Bob’s grave is seldom without flowers. Since his burial in 1913, flowers have regularly appeared on his grave. In recent years it has been plastic flowers, but source of the flowers remains a local mystery.