Salkum Cemetery, Lewis County, Washington
("aka the Mt. Hope and Mount Moriah Masonic Cemeteries")
Salkum
Cemetery - Photos and Transcription Information
Salkum Cemetery, Lewis County, Washington
("aka the Mt. Hope and Mount Moriah Masonic Cemeteries")
From Interstate 5 between Seattle and Vancouver, take exit 68 and head east on Highway 12 (toward Yakima) to the town of Salkum which is about 12 miles from Interstate 5. Just as you leave the town of Salkum (i.e., on the east side), turn right (south) onto Wilcox road and proceed for about 1/4 mile where the road makes a short jog east and back to the south. The Community Church of the Brethren is located where these jogs in the road occur. The cemetery is located on the east side of the road, right at the point where the road jogs to the south again. Official coordinates for this cemetery in the Township and Range System of the Federal Land Survey = T12N R1E Section 13.
The Community Church of the Brethren (Salkum, Washington)
| Owner | Lewis County |
| Acreage | Approximately 5 acres |
| Year Established | 1880's |
| First Burial | Mt. Hope (1886); Mt. Moriah (1900) |
| Last Burial | Currently in Use |
| Number of Identified Burials | Approximately 570 (but only 95 images on this site) |
Alphabetical Surname List with Links to Headstone Images
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A Few Historical Points
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This web site and the cemetery data/photos it is linked to were created using data from the USGENWEB Tombstone Project with the original data located at http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/wa/lewis/cemetery/salkum.txt
Use of any of the photos or cemetery data updates is provided without fee and not to be used for any commercial purpose in any manner. The intent is to provide the information for genealogical research free of charge to any and all users for personal use only.
Use of the original USGENWEB data must be accompanied by the following two statements (applies to all written content and not just the list of names):
1. US GenWeb Archives provide genealogical and historical data to the general public without fee or charge of any kind. It is intended that this material not be used in a commercial manner. All submissions become part of the permanent collection.
2. Burial list of Salkum & Mt. Moriah Masonic Cemeteries has been submitted by John Planinshek December, 1999. Special thanks to the Lewis County Genealogical Society for graciously sharing their data. This notice must remain when the original USGENWEB data are copied or downloaded.
Use of data provided must be for personal genealogical purposes not accessible to the general public. In other words, you can use my pictures in your own family records but you don't have right to use or publish in any manner without my permission.
You may wonder why this site does not include photos of all the headstones in the cemetery. The reason is that the photos were taken while I was on vacation. I went to the cemetery merely to take a photo of my wife's ancestor's headstone. Upon seeing the condition of many of the headstones I decided to take pictures. Because of time limits and my camera's memory cards being almost full, I could only take pictures of those in the greatest state of degradation with an attempt to also capture other family buried near those deteriorating headstones. One or two are in such a bad state as to be unreadable and so were not photographed since no information could be obtained from them.
With respect to completeness, I want to again emphasize and gratefully acknowledge the contributions of John Planinshek and the Lewis County Genealogical Society who originally transcribed the cemetery. I could not have made the corrections and additions that I did without their ground-breaking effort to document. However, it is important to note that my efforts have identified a number of omissions in the data found at http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/wa/lewis/cemetery/salkum.txt
The key point being that the omissions and corrections I found indicate that in spite of valiant efforts to record the contents of this and many other cemeteries by the USGEBWEB Tombstone Project and other worthy efforts, such efforts are a monumental task that can probably only be made entirely complete by the efforts of many individuals. The Salkum cemetery list (and I would add, probably all other cemetery lists) can only be made complete by repeated visits to the cemetery with checking and cross-checking of all data compiled. I would welcome any additional efforts to fully document the Salkum Cemetery in photos and would gladly share my originals with anyone who takes on the effort to do so. I am unable to do it since I do not live in the area. There are about 95 images of headstones.
I would note that I quickly identified the fact that ommisions had occurred because my wife's ancestor was not listed although I found his headstone on my visit. Even though the data currently on the web indicates in some places that it was contributed in 2000, my efforts convinced me that the data is only current through about 1984-1986, meaning that burials after that time period are not recorded in what has previously be available on the internet. Although some of the additions I have made are merely this type of addition, I would note that the majority of my additions are for burials well in advance of this time period and were plainly just missed by previous transcribers. Digital cameras sure are wonderful to help with such efforts and to reduce the number of visits required to completely capture the data in a cemetery.
Contact me if you would like to obtain an original of an image for your ancestor. These files are about 1 MB and thus are not practical for website storage but I will send via email if you request. Please contact me with any additional information or corrections. Please be patient with any requests as it may take up to a month to get a reply.
