We are San Francisco’s oldest funeral company and one of California’s oldest business firms. Since 1850, this family owned and operated firm has maintained a tradition of professional and affordable family service. We continue to serve the trust and confidence of the families we serve as we have done for 155 years.

We are licensed to practice throughout California. Our multi-lingual staff is fully experienced in arranging or prearranging a full array of service alternatives from direct interment or cremation to a fully traditional funeral service. You may select religious, ethnic, traditional, less formal, contemporary, personalized and simple services at home, funeral chapel, cemetery chapel, grave site or other location of your selection as well as one of the city's most convenient, comfortable and attractive facilities, the Evergreen Mortuary at Geary Boulevard and Tenth Ave in San Francisco.

McAvoy O’Hara Company is one of California’s oldest business establishments as well as being the oldest funeral firm in the State. It was originally founded in the late 1840’s as a stage line operated by and under the name of the Beaudry Brothers. The Beaudry’s were French Canadian pioneers of the San Francisco Bay Area. In the late 1840’s, the Beaudry’s enterprise grew beyond the stagecoach line to include stables, livery and carriage services. By 1850, the firm had entered funeral service as an adjunct to the livery and carriage business.

By the 1860’s the Beaudry’s had already separated their successful funeral enterprise from the carriage, livery and stables. Shortly thereafter, Louis Napoleon Beaudry invited Hugh J. McAvoy to join the firm. Mr. McAvoy, a prominent pioneer rancher and banker, held a partnership interest in McAvoy & McCarthy Funeral Company in the city of Oakland. The Beaudry firm’s name was soon changed to Beaudry & McAvoy. As early as 1875, the Beaudry and McAvoy Company had established a location on Market Street in San Francisco thus becoming one of the first firms of any kind to operate on both sides of the San Francisco Bay. Before the turn of the century the Beaudry’s Brothers had retired and the company’s name reflected this as it was changed to McAvoy & Company at that time.

In 1904, Daniel J. O’Hara arrived in The City from Ireland via, Kansas City, Missouri, where he had intended to settle with his many relatives in the area. However, he was dissuaded it is said, by a rather intense lightening storm and thereafter headed west to San Francisco. When he arrived in The City, he was invited to join McAvoy & Company, an offer he accepted in lieu of pursuing a career at the S.F. Gas Company or The S. F. Iron works owned by relatives, the Donahue Brothers. Mr. O’Hara’s name was added to the company title and it then became known as McAvoy O’Hara Company. Shortly thereafter, Mr. O’Hara was credited in historian Oscar Lewis’s History of San Francisco with having built San Francisco’s first modern funeral establishment as well as operating San Francisco’s oldest funeral firm. Although Mr. McAvoy had retired before the Earthquake and Fire of 1906, the firm still operates under the name of McAvoy O’Hara Company.

In 1945, Daniel J. O’Hara, Jr., inherited the firm and continued it’s strong tradition of community-oriented service. He was continuously active in civic and religious affairs and a third generation San Franciscan. His strong roots in The City included his uncles (“The Iron Men of California”, by Richard Dillon) Peter and James Donahue, founders San Francisco Gas Company (‘cornerstone’ of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.) and San Francisco Iron Works (Bethlehem Steel). Daniel O’Hara Jr. made many significant and unique contributions towards establishing professional standards for funeral service in California. He served as the California Funeral Director’s youngest President and Legislative Chairman. During that time he helped design the nations most consumer oriented and protective legislation controlling pre arranged funerals, as well as a comprehensive funeral service price disclosure law that has become a model for the Federal Trade Commission Funeral Rule.

1n 1971, Dan O’Hara, III joined the firm followed in 1973 by his brother Richard O’Hara. In 1995, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors commended the Company for arranging the complementary reburial of 500 San Francisco Pioneers whose remains were discovered on the grounds of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the famed museum overlooking the entrance to San Francisco Bay. In 2000, the California Senate and San Francisco Board of Supervisors commemorated the anniversary of McAvoy O’Hara Company’s 150th year in service to the citizens of California. The Company has been owned and operated by Daniel and Richard O’Hara since 2001.