The
Mulkeys
of
America
By
Philip Mulkey Hunt
Dedication
How my mother, Flossie - Florence Marquis Hunt, daughter of Sarah Mulkey and William Rufus Marquiss - would have enjoyed this book. If I wrote it for anyone, I suppose it was for her. She had such pride in her Mulkey family memories. And she named me for a great-grandfather of hers for whom she had great respect, a 90-year-old Oregon pioneer who was still living, rocking on the porch of a daughter when Flossie was a young child in Eugene.
But of course, I also wrote this for myself. Mostly because I felt it was something that needed doing, and I was in the right time and place, with the right tools to do the job.
Actually, I wrote it for my five children who are, like you, descended from the Mulkeys, and for my growing number of grandchildren (four at this writing), as well as my two sisters and numerous nieces and nephews and their progeny; plus all those "cousins whom I reckon up by dozens and my aunts." Those cousins include a lot of second, third and fourth cousins, and one who lovingly calls me her "52nd cousin" - she's a kissin' cousin, of course. With many of these I've had a warm correspondence and I just hope that they will find this volume some recompense for the time they have spent in writing long letters to me about their branch of the family.
It would be impossible here to acknowledge all of the people who have contributed so much to this effort. My serious correspondence on the subject began with the late Floyd Mulkey of Chicago, who intended to write such a book himself. Floyd was the dean of all of us who have worked in this vine-yard.
My correspondence spread to Keith Mulkey of Ennis, Texas, the most creative genealogical researcher I have ever known.
And then to Dick Maus of Boise, the indefatigable writer-researcher-organizer - the man who virtually single-handed, organized the Mulkey Family Association.
These three have contributed the most to this volume. Without their help and support it would not have been possible.
I have had such a marvelous correspondence with so many family members - most of whom I have never met in person, yet I treasure them like close personal friends. I think they will know who I mean. Several, like Jackie Speegle and Alpha Mulkey, much to my sorrow died before the volume was completed.
Shirley Snider, Mildred Feirich, Sadie Jennaway and June Huskey joined with Keith and Dick and my sisters, Sally Houghton and Nan Booth, in reading the completed manuscript and helped eliminate some of the inevitable errors and typos. But those remaining are purely my own responsibility.
Outside the family, I've had marvelous cooperation from the likes of Loulie Latimer Owens, expert on South Carolina Baptists, Margaret M. Hofmann, the authority on the area where the Mulkeys first settled in North Carolina; the late Barbara Elkins of the Oregon Historical Society; and from Jim Rogers and Bud Wheeler who supervise the Oregon Journal's production department - without their help I could never have completed this project.
Beta - my wife these past 10 years and more -has been most supportive. She has projects of her own, and has been understanding when I have spent many a weekend at the office, typing, typing, typing, and pasting up "camera-ready" pages.
I just hope the readers will get half as much kick out of reading this product as I did in putting it together.
Philip Mulkey Hunt
Portland, Oregon
March 1983
Introduction
Here at last is our book on the Mulkeys of America. I call it our book because it is yours and mine -yours in the sense that hundreds of you furnished not only the basic data but in many cases the written words to describe your own segment of the family. And mine in the sense that I had the privilege, the pleasure and the good fortune to be the one who compiled this volume.
It is a vast volume because we are a vast family - nothing half-vast about the Mulkeys.
This is the book that you have written for the most part, and I have strung it together. It is truly an anthology and history, and to a lesser extent, a genealogy.
Within these hundreds of pages you will find the sometimes blushing diary of a young woman growing up in Illinois; the crimson memories of a Southern orator and son of a Confederate soldier; the unlettered recollections of a pioneer; the gripping story of redemption of a born-again frontier Christian preacher; the musings of a nun who grew up in a pool hall - all told in their own words
Here, you will find an attempt to relate all of us to a common heritage - even though to this day we do not know from whence our Mulkey progenitors came.
Early on, you will find a discussion of the various theories about our foreign roots. I thought I had covered them all. Then a few weeks ago here came a note from Dick Maus of the Mulkey Family Association, enclosing data from some heraldry researcher stating without equivocation that the name is really "Mulkay" and that it comes from Belgium and is pronounced exactly the same as Mulkey.
While heraldry may be a harmless avocation, the amount of proof offered is a minus quantity, and I remain with my Missouri ancestors, waiting to be shown.
The plan for the volume was to begin with the original progenitors, or the earliest one we could find in any given line and follow down each individual line all the way to the present. Then back to child No. 2 and follow the same procedure.
Sometimes groups of families have been placed under one heading because of the appearance of some unifying theme or element - such as the families that came out of Ashe County, North Carolina; the Mulkeys of Georgia and other Deep South states; and finally the Mulkys (with no "e").
Most of this book you will find is "documented" -not with footnotes. Rather we have tried to cite the sources within the text, usually in close proximity to the statements drawn from numerous writers. And we have made a conscious effort to label our own opinions, guesses, suppositions and reconstructions for what they are.
Several thousand letters - a correspondence you wouldn't believe - have gone into the making of this work. At today's postage prices the cost would be prohibitive.
The writing and production of Mulkeys has continued over a period of about six years, plus another three or more years spent in researching and putting together a predecessor volume most of you never saw called The Mulkeys of Oregon (which is out of print and which is completely superceded by this volume). When you add to this the time spent while a Graduate Student in History at Stanford University in 1946-47, where I worked on an extensive paper about the Mullicas in New Sweden on The Delaware - it all adds up to about one decade invested in this effort.
You will find the style of gathering and presenting data undergoes subtle changes over this period of time. As a newspaperman who spent a couple of years on the copydesk rim where one of the principal concerns is style, I must confess that establishing a style and sticking with it is nigh on to impossible. It is my belief that style is something which continues to evolve as time goes on, and as a per-son's ideas change.
One device we tried - to use descending sizes of headline type to signify the following generations -frankly didn't work worth a damn. Some may take the size of the headline type to indicate the relative importance of that person within the family. Such was not the intent.
We have on occasion introduced italic headlines of varying sizes, to call attention to some of the unusual characters in the family. But if your name is not in headline type, it does not mean that I have a lesser regard for you than I do for some other member of the family.
The word "descendents" is a little idiosyncrasy of mine. The dictionary shows the final syllable with either an "a" or an "e". I tried to standardize with the "e" but when quoting others used their spelling. At any rate, "descendents" or descendants" is a much overused word in this volume.
We have made minor corrections in spellings of contemporary authors but have left as is some of the early day compositions, where the mispellings are part of the flavor of the documents - such as a letter from my great-great-grandfather Philip Mulkey, pioneer Oregon preacher, to his niece in Illinois.
Quotations: When quoting only a paragraph or two we have used quotation marks. But where the quote goes on considerably longer, we have left out the cluttering look of quotation marks and instead tried to indicate that a long quote is coming up, and to make a small spacing before the beginning and at the end. Obviously, if we had thought it through, we would likely have indented the quotes to set them off more clearly.
BOLDFACING on gray pages (of all one-size type) is a common device to break the monotony in newspapers. The use of boldfacing in genealogical lists, sometimes in caps, was another device which we began to use midway in the production of this book, particularly where multiple generations were involved. This device is not intended to indicate that those in boldface or in caps are somehow more important than those in light face, but rather to help the reader to quickly identify the persons of one generation from the next.
In addition, the data we have received comes in such a variety of forms that it becomes exceedingly difficult to stick with one style to fit the available information.
Generally, we have tried to place all genealogical data in 8-point type (with an extra 2-point spacing for easier readability), and all story material in 10-point type with added spacing. But about six
WHAT, 32 AGAIN? - It's a family joke, the author each year celebrating another 32nd birthday (there've been 30 of them so far). Helping in the endeavor are grandsons Sam Martin, left, and Joshua Hunt, all ready to give it a good blow, while dancing daughter Mary, in the background, jumps for joy.
months before we completed getting type from the Oregon Journal's computer, the latter was reprogrammed in such a manner as to make it impossible to get exactly the same size and widths of type which we had been using. Thus we had to settle for an approximation.
Perhaps you can tell that the book was put together in a somewhat helter-skelter fashion - not written straight through from beginning to end, but jumping around from one part to another. Thus some of what appear to be early chapters may have been among the last to be produced. For one thing, we kept hoping for breakthroughs, new data which would help better explain the relationships between the various branches of the family. And there have been some breakthroughs.
If you find odd bits of data and pictures scattered through this book in strange places, far removed from the rest of a given family, it indicates that this was last minute info which we tucked into the book in the available spaces left when the original elements of the book were put together, as we noted earlier, in a somewhat helter-skelter fashion.
Pictures - We invited, urged and cajoled family members to lend us pictures. Some sent many, others sent none. If your family is not represented, we're sorry.
One of the reasons this book was assembled in semi-looseleaf form was to allow the reader to insert additional standard 8'/2 x 11 inch pages for YOUR OWN ADDITIONAL STORIES and PlCTURES and to keep abreast of the changes in your family.
You will note there is a copyright on this book -the purpose of which is merely to protect this work from any commercial use without our sanction. But let me tell you, here is one instance where you are encouraged to make Xerox copies of any sections or pages of this book that may be of interest to other members of your family who would not want a copy of the entire book. Our aim is to "spread the word" and you are welcome to help do so.
A book such as this is never done. Life goes on, and writes new chapters - whether they get into print or no. New data is discovered which sheds new light on problem areas and things which we were previously unable to understand.
We will welcome your notes with corrections where we have erred, and with any new data which hopefully will be able to find its way into print, one place or another.
For all the errors, and I know there will be more than a few, I take full responsibility. Of course I knew better. Just forgot.
There
is room for all kinds of new research. Just skimming through should give you
plenty of clues. So have at it. We wish you good hunting.
