Located in the heart of
Eugene Masonic Cemetery are the gravesites of Eugene and Mary Skinner. There are two placards that stand near their graves. One reads:
Eugene Skinner - First Settler - 1809-1864
"Ya-po-ah," said the Indians as they pointed to the hillside which today we know as Skinner's Butte. Build high up? "Why?" Eugene Skinner asked. "Big waters come some day," they cautioned. It was June 1846 when Skinner built a meager cabin on level land on the west slope. He left for the winter and returned the following spring with his wife Mary Cook Skinner.
In 1853, when Skinner and Charnel Mulligan donated land for the county seat, the community was officially named Eugene City. Skinner ran a ferry across the Willamette River. A store and a post office operated out of portions of his cabin, with the first settler as postmaster. During his lifetime, he made many other contributions to the young city including serving as district court clerk, city council member and the first Mason of Eugene Lodge #11. He also donated land for many of the county's first buildings.
"We have no aristocracy and no high style of living," he wrote. "Still we enjoy life as well as those who roll in luxuries." Apparently, the first Eugenean was quite content with the newly settle land he and his family called home.
The cemetery has a PDF document on their website that further highlights Eugene's life and reads:
Eugene’s premier citizen would have to be the man for whom the town was named. Eugene Skinner (1809-1864) came in 1846 to the hill known today as Skinner Butte and built a cabin on level land just west of the rise. He left for thewinter and returned the following spring with his wife, Mary Cook Skinner, and daughter, also named Mary — the first white women in Lane County. Another daughter, Lenora, was the first white child born in the county.
In 1860, Skinner sent a letter to his sister back east, recalling his early days in the Oregon country. “May 1847,” he wrote. “Moved my wife and Child Mary then 5 mo old, into our new home in the far off west, 45 miles to the first neighbor on the North 450 miles on the South,China Hong Kong or Pekin on the west Missouri on the east.”
He then listed his possessions: three cows with calves, nine horses, six pigs, one hog, a dozen chicks, one cat, one dog, and forty-four cents cash. “And once I was compelled to leave my wife and little one alone whilst I went in Search of flour the nearest mill being 80 miles,” he wrote. “I was gone 6 nights and the Country full of Indians.”
That would all change soon enough. Skinner ran a ferry across the Willamette River, a store operated out of a portion of his cabin, and a post office named Skinner’s was established in 1850, with the first settler as postmaster. The name was changed to Eugene City in 1853, when Skinner and Charnel Mulligan donated land for the county seat.
By 1860, Skinner could tell his sister that his town had almost a thousand people, with one school, eight stores, three each of churches, blacksmiths, and wagon shops, two each of drug stores, hotels, saloons, printers, saddle makers, and cabinet shops, as well as a market, shoe shop, grist mill, saw mill, and a door and sash factory. “We have no aristocracy and no high style of living,” he wrote. “Still we enjoy life as well as those who roll in luxuries."
Skinner was, of necessity, the first Eugenean. Was first also the first Mason of Eugene Lodge #11, initiated in March 1856 - and the first member to die.