Mulkey Findings

Took a hike up Hawkins Heights today to see Mulkey cemetery, which is not too hard to find and is indeed on the top of a small hill which used to be a pear and apple orchard. F.G. Vaughan is buried there, with his second wife, Miranda, and some of their descendants. The original settlers, William and Phoebe, are buried in Coburg, with William's brother Thomas and Floyd's poor first wife Angeline. Two of F.G.'s sons, Floyd B. and Richard (Richey) are up there too, in the two Mulkey plots.

Angeline was killed by falling from a wagon at 47 and I searched through old newspapers to find the article in 1882 describing the incident. It said they had five children at the time, which is fascinating, because three of the four children that I knew about were all born to F.G.'s second wife, who reportedly was his housekeeper, Miranda Freeze Haskett. They married in the same year, 1882, because of the five children I suppose, and they proceeded to have some more. I know about one, Richey.

There are various Vaughans buried there who have no information with them so far, including several children who died young: Casper, Bonnie, and Leta. They were also born after 1882, so might have been cousins or something, though they are buried with F.G. and Miranda. I wonder if some of the five might have been Miranda's, and because she was the housekeeper, they were living in the household, and the reporter didn't know the difference. A couple who lie here were named Mack and O.H. Haskett, and they were two and five at the time of their mother's step up. Her earlier husband isn't identified yet, though.

It was easy to be killed in those days; the papers are filled with children's deaths from falling in vats of boiling water, being kicked and stepped on by livestock, and being bitten by rattlesnakes. The first recorded white burial in our area, in 1853, was Jesse Haskett who was bitten. He was 32 at the time, so could have been Miranda's father maybe...she was born in 1854. But her maiden name is Freeze, so maybe it's Haskett Freeze Vaughan, and maybe she was adopted by the Freeze family after her father died. The young children could also have been fathered by the man who employed her...wouldn't be the first time that happened. That would account for three of the five, maybe.

But Richey Vaughan was 21 in the year of the accident, so it's likely he was already gone and not a child. Of his three children, the longest-living was Elnora, who died at sixteen. Poor Alta May died at three, and none of them were born then. I think all the descendants came through the Bilyeu Vaughan line, through his two daughters. There are some unused grave sites behind Floyd B, who died about the time I was born, and unless I find more records I might never unravel it all.

The records are really only available if some descendant figures the stuff out before everyone forgets. There are so many forlorn grave markers in the old cemeteries, with the stories buried too. It's a bit sad, so I've been skimming the newspapers to see if I can find anything that will add to the knowledge for some unknown reason.

These people are not even my relatives. My grandparents on my mother's side, whom I was lucky enough to know, were born in the 1890's. My grandma emigrated to Nebraska and lived in a soddy. They were farmers who took that "free" land near the sandhills that is now coveted by the big oil sands pipeline. They were good people, and I think of them often when I look around for traces of these Oregon farmers. My Mom, 86 now, was born after most of these people were adults, though she and Grace are only forty years apart.

I had to make a family tree for these Vaughans and will do more research to see if I can pin down a few more facts about them and embellish my imaginings. I want to find out who all the children were. It has gone a bit beyond my house, though I'm still on that trail.

I will have to see the other graves now, because there are people buried nearby that aren't recorded. I expect the Coburg cemetery will be full of mysteries. I expect Grace's memorial to be a little dry and unsatisfying now that I have imagined so much about her life. I picture her growing up on that dairy farm, just like my mother did. Mom was lonely even in a family of ten kids, and she wanted to see the world (which she has, and good for her!) I see little girls in dresses wandering grassy pastures dreaming big dreams.

I don't know how big Grace's dreams were. Maybe she didn't have kids because of the number of children who failed to thrive in her ancestry. I wonder if they were poor and malnourished, in the years before the farmers learned how to work this land. It was rich, but like the land they came from, floody. It's a theory that the cemetery is up on top of that hill because of the Missouri Floods of the 1840's, which may have driven those folks west. Maybe anyone who made that trip weakened themselves irrevocably with all that suffering. Heaven knows childbirth was not easy in those days without much medical care, and injuries usually resulted in death unless the person could heal himself.

To tell you the truth, I don't think I would have even liked these people all that much. The newspapers I've been scanning for details show that Eugene settlers were racist, sexist, elitist men without many scruples when it came to treating anyone who fit their definition of "other." They waltzed in here and took the land that was best and exploited it. They felt that the natives' time had passed and destiny was in their own favor, as well as their God.. Even Grace was a member of some secretive "societies" like Easter Star, the women's branch of the Masons. I know when my father joined the Masons they were still pretty anti-Catholic, though the Job's Daughters let me in after some discussion because only my mother was Catholic, plus I could play the piano. I didn't stay with it long enough to learn any of the secrets, because my piano skills were humiliating and I kept messing up the processions with my stumbling playing. Besides the fact that intolerance never did sit too well with me, as a child of the sixties.

And of course just because the paper spouted bigotry, that doesn't mean the ordinary people were bigots. They were just farmers. They probably just wanted to farm and feed their families and love their land. (Maybe they loved it, maybe they just exploited it.) I doubt the dairy farm was really the farm part, since it was only two or three acres in this location. F.G. probably still grew alfalfa and corn on his other lands. I suppose the cows could have grazed all the way up to the orchards on Hawkins then, though, before people built all these damned houses and fences. It feels like there is not an open square inch left, and people like me keep putting more structures on that too.

I'll go to Mulkey again now that I know it's walkable (though it did take three hours.) I want to see if there are orchard trees left; I didn't see any. There are a few oaks, the kind that keep their brown leaves until spring, and Doug firs and cedars that are probably volunteer. I want to remove those cotoneasters from the Vaughan's plot. Grace wouldn't like knowing they are pushing on the stones. I wonder if she was the one who chose to have callas on her parents' gravestones, when they were buried in 1926 and 1932. I'll also have to study gravestone design now I guess. Not many men up there have the calla design...now I think F.G. loved flowers too and taught that to Grace.

Mulkey was apparently the first preacher to have a church here, and he and Hawkins donated the land for the cemetery. Hawkins had a big orchard, and a big beautiful house with a wrap-around porch that is lower on the hill. I've been in it; Nan Lester told me she bought it from the family, as I recall. Nan is sadly no longer alive, so I can't ask her, but I remember quizzing her thoroughly on it when I visited. It's a gorgeous house, hardly touched, just exquisitely maintained. Hawkins made some money off of his apples, or more likely by selling off the land he claimed.

The last of the orchard used to be next to their house, but now there are two new fancy Craftsmans packed in there. The entire Hawkins Heights is packed with big houses, not quite the McMansions like higher up, but big and expensive. I tried to find a Mulkey house, and there is one good candidate with a little piece of original work left, but really they all looked kind of the same to me. I want to see old, classic houses, exquisitely maintained, not new ostentatious status-declaring boxes. But of course the ones I like were ostentatious at the time. Not mine. I'm pretty sure it was once built for workers to live in, with no second story, just the basics. Frank and Grace made it nice. I made it valuable again. Kinda valuable. Loved, anyway.

You either have to have a lot of money, though, or a lot of time, or maybe a lot of relatives so you can have a carpenter and a plasterer in the family. It's pretty hard to keep up with all the things that need work. When we bought this place, nothing substantial had been done since the plaster went on, except the addition of the flooring. Some of the original green paint was still there, on the back of the house, and all the signs pointed to landlords using it as a rental. If Grace and Frank lived here, it might have been the last time an owner lived in the place, and they sold it in 1924, if my records are correct.

Of course it is also possible that many people did things to it that are not evident. The boards with Frank's name could have been moved, or taken off and put back after the improvement. There was one section of some later ugly wallpaper that I didn't save, put on where the stove was removed I think. There was a brick chimney still partially there where all the ants lived. There was probably some kind of back porch with a view of the pastures (and what I think was the original farmhouse on the corner) and all that open space that used to be here instead of all of us.

I almost wish I could do the remodel over with more care. I broke a lot of the wide baseboards trying to pry them out, as the hardwood (fir) flooring was put in after they were...they extended down an inch below the floor, which took me some time to figure out. There is probably something under the hardwood that could provide a clue, though I have no reason to remove it. There was some awful asbestos tile under the grubby kitchen linoleum, which was glued down to some really long fir flooring that was then ruined, though I saved enough to floor the porch. Definitely when this house was built and rebuilt there was plenty of good wood to use for it.

And definitely the person who built the place was not the same one who built the cabinets. Those were finish work, by someone who had done it before. They were painted red over green and had terrible plastic covering on them that wouldn't be removed. I guess they had to go, like someday my wonderful maroon, dark green and dark turquoise tile will get sledged by someone who thinks it looks dated. Time marches on, oh yes, it certainly does. We think we are putting down roots, but sometimes things are harder than we expected.

Sometimes our legacy rots and isn't fixed back up. Weeds crack and hide our work; our epitaphs go unread. I will not even have a grave, so my words will have to last. Thank goodness there will be plenty of them.