SEDRO-WOOLLEY — The imposing 71⁄2-foot pillar of gray granite stands as tall as the tales told about Duke Friederich George.

Purportedly Bavarian royalty, George lived on what is now called Duke’s Hill, where Highway 9 runs north of the city.

But the “Duke” wasn’t really a duke — at least that’s the conclusion drawn by local genealogists who tracked down George’s ancestry, said Lorraine Rothenbuhler, a Sedro-Woolley Museum board member.

“The Duke was a character,” Rothenbuhler said. “His father sent him money and he lived at Cranberry Lake. Most people assumed he was a duke.”

Rothenbuhler said that the prevailing theory is that one of George’s relatives might have held a title, but not Friederich George, who was born in 1874 and died in 1907, and now rests in one of the older sections of the Union Cemetery.

Still, George lives on in notoriety and remains a popular person of interest for visitors to the cemetery.

“A lot of people have a scavenger hunt for Duke,” said Jeff Moody, who manages the city-owned cemetery. 

Characters of history

Besides rascals such as the Duke, the 20-acre Union Cemetery is the final resting place for between 8,000 and 10,000 people from the Sedro-Woolley area. It is one of 12 cemeteries in Skagit County, not counting the small plots once used by families or logging camps or bygone communities that are only artifacts in museums or points on historic maps, according to the Skagit Valley Genealogical Society’s annotations of the various cemeteries.

On a clear day, visitors to Union Cemetery can see Cultus, Haystack, Lyman, Josephine, Sauk, Iron, and Coal mountains in the distance.

The graves of early settlers, community leaders, war veterans, ne’er-do-wells, lawmen and ordinary folk lie under the cedars and junipers that dot the landscape.

Each Memorial Day, the American Legion George Baldridge Post 43 holds services to honor the veterans buried there, from as far back as the Spanish–American War in 1898 to the most recent military conflicts.

The cemetery is a symbol of the rough, tough and sometimes humorous history of the two 19th century logging settlements, Woolley and Bug, that later joined to become Sedro-Woolley.

Bug’s founder, Mortimer Cook, named the settlement along the Skagit River for the insects that swarmed there, Rothenbuhler said. Cook isn’t buried in the cemetery. He died in the Philippines, she said.

But Georgianna Batey, the woman responsible for changing the name of the town, is buried alongside her husband, David, in the section of Union Cemetery once owned by the International Order of the Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization.

Georgianna Batey, along with other female settlers, convinced Cook that a community couldn’t be named Bug, regardless of the number of mosquitoes. The women simply would not stand for it, Rothenbuhler said.

Batey and the wives of other settlers flipped through various dictionaries that Batey owned. The pioneer women came across “cedro,” Spanish for cedar. The word seemed fitting because the town was surrounded by cedar trees that sustained the successful logging settlement. The women modified the word to Sedro.

“(Cook) wasn’t happy about it but let them send a letter to the Post Office,” Rothenbuhler said.

Woolley’s founder, Philip A. Woolley, also rests in the cemetery, his and his family’s grave markers set off by a metal fence provided by the Mount Vernon Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Woolley’s marker makes no mention of his role in founding the community and lists only his name and dates of birth and death.

While some of the people there were known for their community contributions, others, including brothel owners and sisters Elsie Moore and Kate McMurry, were recognized for more notorious reasons, as well as philanthropic endeavors.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Moore and McMurry ran the Fern Rooms on Metcalf Street, according to “Images of America: Sedro-Woolley, Washington.”

If husbands overspent the family’s earnings at the brothel, leaving nothing for food, Moore was known to return the money to her customers’ wives, Rothenbuhler said.

Moore also ran one of the first soup kitchens, Rothenbuhler said. McMurry died in 1935, Moore in 1947, and the brothel closed in 1952.

Two cemeteries merge

The Union Cemetery has operated since 1887 or 1889, depending on the historic document.

The current Union Cemetery was once actually two cemeteries: one owned by the Wicker family and the other by the Odd Fellows.

According to county records, C.A. Wicker purchased part of the current property in 1890. It was not formally recorded as a graveyard until 1895.

Eddie McFadden is the first recorded burial in 1887.

City leaders purchased the cemetery owned by the Wicker family in 1971, according to the Skagit Valley Genealogical Society’s annotation of the Union Cemetery. In 1993, the city assumed ownership of the cemetery land that was owned by the Odd Fellows.

Through the years, plenty of mystery has revolved around the cemetery’s name.

“There is debate about whether it’s the Union Cemetery because of the Civil War or because the city cemetery and Odd Fellows Cemetery joined and formed a union,” said Noel Bourasaw, editor of the online Skagit River Journal, which focuses on local history. 

It seems unlikely that there’s a direct tie between the Civil War and the name because the community was first settled roughly 20 years following the war’s end in 1865.

The answer could well be lost to time, he said.

It’s impossible to know exactly how many people have been buried there. Few records prior to the 1930s survived and many graves aren’t marked with headstones, Moody said. Many grave sites rest under Wicker Road.

Changes through time

The cemetery wasn’t always so well kept, according to Chuck Ruhl, co-owner of Lemley Funeral Chapel in Sedro-Woolley. Until 1941, the owners of the plots were responsible for maintenance.

When the city took over maintaining the plots, the landscape improved. Many of the old elaborate headstones have been cleaned up. Others have even been updated by family members, including that of David Donnelly.

Donnelly, who lived from 1864 until 1935, was one of the city’s first mayors. He was known for convincing the state Legislature to fund the community’s first bridge over the Skagit River, Rothenbuhler said.

Donnelly’s updated headstone includes an image of him chomping on a cigar and sporting a handlebar mustache and a black cowboy-style hat.

For the most part, the community and city have treated the cemetery well. But occasionally, Moody said he’s had to deal with vandalism. The worst incident, in which someone tipped over about 75 headstones, took place in the late 1990s, before he began working with the cemetery, Moody said.

Although Moody works regularly among the grave markers, he said he’s still moved by the stories they tell about the people buried under them. He can tell from the dates inscribed on the markers when an entire family died all of the same illness.

He also said he admires the craftsmanship of the older headstones.

The unique tree-shaped marker for George C. White, born in 1876 and died in 1905, prompted Moody to speculate that White may have died in the woods, possibly logging.

“I’ve pressure washed some of these headstones. It takes about five minutes so you really look at them,” Moody said. “It really looks like a standing tree.”

Marta Murvosh can be reached at 360-416-2149 or .