Manning-Heffern-O’Neill Funeral Home
With the merger of the Manning-Heffern and Costigan-O’Neill funeral homes, the Manning-Heffern-O’Neill Funeral Home will continue to serve the Blackstone Valley with over two centuries of combined and localized expertise.
Patrick Manning immigrated from Ireland to Pawtucket in 1850, a carpenter and wheelwright by trade. In 1868, Manning started working as an undertaker and casket furnisher, operating his own business in the Quality Hill neighborhood of Pawtucket. At the turn of the 20th century, Patrick’s son Daniel Edward “Ned” Manning continued the business, and moved the facilities a few blocks over to 68 Broadway, where the funeral home continued to serve the City of Pawtucket for over 100 years.
Ned Manning’s sister Elizabeth married a dentist named Peter Heffern. Their son, James Manning “Jim” Heffern, continued operation of the family funeral business by the time he was 25 years old in 1930. In 1941 a local funeral director, Lincoln Moro, joined Jim Heffern and helped grow the business for 62 years until his death. Lincoln Moro’s son James E. Moro still works as a funeral director in Rhode Island.
Jim Heffern’s niece, Rae Cahill, married funeral director Raymond Edward Wynne Sr. in 1956. Ray and Rae both continued the Manning-Heffern Funeral Home and operated the business until their son Raymond Edward “Ted” Wynne Jr. carried on the family legacy as the owner of the longest continually operated funeral business in Pawtucket. In 2023, Ted Wynne and John H. O’Neill merged their two funeral businesses, which now operates as the Manning-Heffern-O’Neill Funeral home in Pawtucket’s Quality Hill at 220 Cottage Street.
The relatives of John H. O’Neill have been directing funerals in the Blackstone Valley since 1886. First among them was Thomas J. Crane, the son of Irish immigrants fleeing famine, born in Providence in 1861. Crane left school at age eleven to work at Allen Printworks, where he remained for nine years. He learned the undertaking business from Patrick Quinn of Providence, and apprenticed for John McCusker, undertaker, of Central Falls. Crane formed a new undertaking business with R. N. Burns in Central Falls in the 1880’s. In 1895 the partnership with Burns had dissolved and Crane carried on his own business on Mill St. in Central Falls until his untimely death in 1900.
Thomas Crane’s grandson, Vincent P. O’Neill, began working in the funeral industry with V.J. McAloon and Sons for eleven years before founding the O’Neill Funeral Home in Pawtucket’s Pleasant View neighborhood in 1964. For more than 25 years, Vincent and his wife Joan lived and raised their eight children right upstairs from the funeral parlor, located on the first floor of their double-decker home at 3 Park Street.
In 1990 Vincent and his youngest son, John H. O’Neill, bought the A.T. Costigan and Son Funeral Home at 220 Cottage Street and merged the two businesses at that address. The new location provided much-needed space for their growing business, allowing the O’Neill's to offer their clients the same high level of personalized service with more room for wakes and funeral services inside and more parking outside. For many years, Vincent and John worked together at the Costigan-O’Neill Funeral Home providing caring service to their city of Pawtucket.
In 2002, John H. O’Neill bought the Mulcahey Funeral Home at 3102 Mendon Road in Cumberland, Rhode Island. After making extensive interior and exterior upgrades to the property, he renamed it “O’Neill” and John, his wife Roberta, and their three children moved and settled into Cumberland. Vincent has since passed away and John is honored to carry on the family tradition: “My Dad was a caring, compassionate man who loved his family, his home and his community.”
Today, John O’Neill, his wife Roberta, Ted Wynne, and team of caring, expert, and licensed funeral professionals work with families throughout Rhode Island and nearby southern Massachusetts. With their multiple locations, the O’Neill Funeral Homes offer their clients the convenience and comfort of being close to a funeral home in a local community. As always and in all cases, they see to it that grieving clients receive the dignified, undivided attention they deserve in their time of need.
