Mulkey Cemetery Memorial Day Service

We're taking a break from this for one more year!

3335 S. Lambert Street, Eugene

To contact us please email mulkeycemetery @ gmail.com

We depend upon your financial support. Please send your tax-deductible contribution to Mulkey Cemetery, PO Box 26124, Eugene, Oregon 97402

THANK YOU!

It’s time again for cemetery workdays!

Work Parties
Saturdays, 10AM-2PM
5/8, 5/15, 5/22/ 5/29
Send us your email!
[email protected]

Join us for a work party to spiff up the cemetery any Saturday in May between 10AM and 2PM. Bring a shovel, clippers, weed whacker, or any other implements. You can work on a family plot or join in to remove invasive species, spread mulch, or pull weeds. If that is not enticing enough, we will have cookies...and a Port-a-Potty!

You're welcome to come and pitch in. We’ll be at the cemetery mid-day, cleaning up, tending plants, and getting ready for Memorial Day. Hope to see you there!

Mulkey Cemetery is named for the Mulkey family, who arrived in Oregon in 1853. Patriarch Philip Mulkey, accompanied by his wife, Martha, and several of their adult children, emigrated from Kentucky and claimed land in the southern Willamette Valley. The elder Mulkeys farmed 320 acres of land in what became west Eugene; other family members claimed land to the north, along what is now Old Coburg Road. Philip was the first traveling preacher in Lane County and became a well-known local figure.

Pioneer life in Oregon was rewarding but challenging. As far as we are now aware, the first burial in this location, of thirty-six-year-old Lucinda Barger, took place in January of 1856. The Bargers had a land claim in west Eugene, and their name survives as the name of Barger Drive. The teenaged Aaron McPherson was buried in 1857, followed by two elderly men, J.C. Brashear and John H. Edmunson, in 1860.

Between 1862 and 1865, Martha Mulkey and three of the Mulkey grandchildren died and were buried here. The hilltop became known informally as the “Mulkey Cemetery.”

By the late 1870s, more than 25 burials had taken place at the cemetery. In the 1880s, several local families joined together to formally deed the hilltop land as a cemetery. The arrangement was formalized in 1891, when a plat map was made and recorded with the county.

In 1923, the cemetery incorporated as an Oregon nonprofit, making the cemetery association one of the oldest corporations in our region which still operates in essentially its original form.

From the late nineteenth century through the 1950s, the cemetery was surrounded by the pear and cherry orchards planted by Edward Hawkins, who came to Oregon as a child in 1845. In 1956, the orchard was subdivided. The area is still known as “Hawkins Heights,” and the names of early settlers have become the names of streets in this quiet residential neighborhood.

The Mulkey Cemetery is maintained by the Mulkey Cemetery Association, which became an IRS-recognized 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation in 2008. The Association has limited historical information available in our files, but please feel free to let us know if you have a research question you’re working on and we’ll see what we can do to help. We are also happy to receive copies of cemetery-related records, including deeds, death certificates, and biographical information about individuals interred at the Mulkey. Thank you!

Historical Sources for the Mulkey Cemetery

A bibliography of historical materials about cemetery history and families.

Burials continue to take place at the Mulkey Cemetery, as they have for nearly a century and a half, in spaces owned by Mulkey members and their descendants. Mulkey is no longer selling new burial plots, but spaces in the cremation garden are currently available.

When you are ready to use your cemetery lot – whether you want to conduct a burial or place a monument – please contact the cemetery association to make the arrangements necessary to complete your burial. This allows us to coordinate with you and/or your funeral home, collect necessary interment fees, and make sure everything goes smoothly.

Many burials are handled by local funeral homes. Interment of cremated remains is often done privately by an individual’s family or friends. If you prefer to inter cremated remains yourself, the cemetery association will ask you to sign a receipt indicating that we have received the remains. We will also need a copy of the deceased’s death certificate for our files. Please contact the cemetery administrator prior to your cremains burial so we can prepare your receipt.

NATURAL BURIAL OPTIONS

The Mulkey Cemetery offers environmentally-sensitive options for interment. We are happy to work with individuals and families to develop burial plans which incorporate their priorities and values.

The cemetery’s traditional landscape reflects the cemetery board’s commitment to environmentally sound land stewardship. We maintain a simple pioneer cemetery aesthetic, featuring a mix of heritage and native plants. Plants are maintained without the use of pesticides or herbicides. This requires additional mowing during the growing season and considerable hand-weeding time from our volunteers, but we believe that limiting chemical use is an important component of our long-term management of the cemetery. The cemetery is not irrigated; new plantings are hand-watered until they are established. New plantings consist predominantly of native plants, whose selection is guided by the cemetery board. The cemetery provides habitat for a variety of birds, insects, and mammals.

The cemetery association does not require embalming, the use of liners, or the use of coffins for interments. Burials made without liners (including both coffin-only and shroud burials) will be asked for an additional burial fee, payable at the time of interment, to cover our increased maintenance costs in the event of subsidence.

Burials of cremated remains may be made with or without a container, at the discretion of the burying party.

The new cremated remains garden, on the east side of the cemetery, was dedicated on Memorial Day, 2010. Please contact us if you are interested in burial or memorialization space in the garden

POLICIES AND FEE SCHEDULE

While no new burial lots are currently for sale, Mulkey members may sell their lots to other parties. The deed transfer will not be considered final, however, until it has been accepted in writing by the Mulkey Cemetery Administrator and a new deed to the new owner has been issued. There may be a deed transfer fee applicable to accompany the new deed.

A lot is suitable for a single burial or up to four interments of cremated remains. The cemetery board’s policies on new monument design and placement are described in our Monument Guidelines brochure. An administrative fee is payable at the time any lot is used, whether an interment is made or a monument is placed. This fee covers the administrative costs associated with your interment. 

Cremains-only space in our Cremains Garden is available, which includes a 2′ by 2′ burial space and a 4″ by 6″ bronze plaque on one of the large granite memorial markers on the northeast side of the garden. Memorial plaques (no burial) on the memorial markers are available for a fee.

Lot owners are considered members of the Mulkey Cemetery Association, receive regular mailings regarding cemetery news, work days, and events, and are asked to contribute annual dues to support maintenance and administrative costs. Current dues are $35 per year.

Fees and costs are subject to change without notice, at the discretion of the cemetery’s board of directors.

You may reach the cemetery via e-mail (mulkeycemetery @ gmail.com) or by postal mail at:

Mulkey Cemetery Association
P.O. Box 26124
Eugene, Oregon 97402

(541)-337-0208

Please do not send mail or any other deliveries to the cemetery’s premises at 3335 S. Lambert Street. We do not have an office or mail box at the cemetery.

Because we are a volunteer-managed nonprofit organization, we may not be able to respond immediately to queries. Thank you for your understanding.

The majority of the genealogical, historical, and plot information which we hold is available here on our web site, on the Interments and History pages. We do not have much additional archival material in our files, so research requests are unlikely to yield additional data.

When visiting, please respect the cemetery’s peaceful nature and our neighbors by keeping noise to a minimum. On-leash pets are welcome. Please clean up after your animals. Thank you.

Our street address is 3555 S. Lambert Street, Eugene, Oregon 97402

From Interstate 5, take I-105/Oregon 126 to the 126/Highway 99 exit. Take 6th Ave. west to Chambers St. Make a left onto Chambers. Make a right onto West 18th Ave. Follow directions from downtown Eugene, below.

From downtown Eugene, take West 18th Ave. heading west. Turn southwest (left) onto Hawkins Ave. Turn west (right) on South Lambert St. Turn north (right) on the portion of South Lambert that runs north-south. The cemetery gate is at the end of the street.

There are a number of unmarked graves within the cemetery.  We generally have very limited information available about the exact locations of these burials, although what we know varies from case to case.  If you are the relative of an individual buried in one of these unmarked graves, we can work with you to commemorate that burial. It is in everyone’s interest that burials be clearly marked.

If you are aware of the specific location where your relative was buried, you may place a monument at that location, subject to the cemetery’s Monument Guidelines. We may also be able to assist you with setting up a lower-cost permanent bronze plaque memorialization on a known gravesite, if you are unable to afford a standard monument. Contact us for more information about how to place a monument in the cemetery.

If you are not sure where your relative is buried but would like to memorialize them at the cemetery, we have space available on the memorial stone in our cremains garden for commemorative bronze plaques. These are available at a cost of $300 each, measure 4 by 6 inches, and have space for names, dates, and brief texts.

View our Past Interments List here - Mulkey Burial Records - view or download PDF 

Our interments database was compiled over many years, primarily by volunteers, and we are aware that it includes some errors. We’re now able to correct those, so if you identify an error, please email us at admin   @   mulkeycemetery.org, including documentation for your requested correction (copies of death certificates, obituaries, or similar materials).

We believe that there are fewer errors in this version than in other published Mulkey interments lists. There are NO authorized third-party online lists of burials at the Mulkey, nor do we believe any of the extant third-party lists are current or accurate. We are not able to make corrections to third-party listings since we have no control over those sites.

This database is presented for personal research use only.  The cemetery provides genealogical information online as a courtesy to cemetery families and other researchers; there is no legal requirement for us to do so.  We recommend confirming any data here in additional sources. We have very limited genealogical information available in our files, given the age of the cemetery and the limited recordkeeping required in past generations.

All rights to this database are reserved by the cemetery association. Copying or use of this database or the information within it for any commercial purpose without the express written permission of the Mulkey Cemetery Association is prohibited.

People who are not interred at the cemetery but have headstones or other memorials here may be listed in the interments list in a way which does not distinguish these from physical burials.

If a burial plot number is not given in this list, we do not have any additional information relating to that individual’s specific location of burial. There are many unmarked graves at the Mulkey.

We strongly recommend that if you need to confirm details relating to any individual who you believe may be interred at the Mulkey, you do so by ordering the appropriate death certificate from the Oregon Vital Records Office.

Historic Plot Map - Download Mulkey photo overlay plot map

Map of the Urn Garden - 2x2 plots - Download Mulkey.cremation.section_000194