Record Group 
DOUBLE BUTTE CEMETERY COLLECTION

CALL NUMBER: RG 40

PROVENANCE: Collection transferred from the Tempe Community Services/Parks and Recreation Department

SCOPE: Records from the Tempe Double Butte Cemetery relating to individual burial fees and locations, cemetery maintenance, and membership in the Tempe Cemetery Association. 

CONTENT: Records: circa 1897 to 1998 COLLECTION DESCRIPTION: Several Tempe shareholders organized the Tempe Cemetery Company in September 1897, although plot sales for the Double Butte Cemetery date back to 1892.  Niels Petersen donated the original cemetery land, located "just below the Double Buttes in Tempe.  The Company purchased additional land in the mid-1920s.  In 1926, the Company reorganized under the Tempe Cemetery Association for charitable purposes rather than profit.  Many of the records in this collection were property of the Tempe Cemetery Association until 1958, when the city took over the Double Butte Cemetery.  This collection came to the Museum from the Tempe Parks and Recreation Department after a private company, Tempe Double Butte Cemetery Inc., bought the cemetery in April 1998.

This collection contains two boxes of burial orders; five boxes of burial invoices; two boxes of cemetery easement records; one box of cemetery applications; two boxes of cemetery record books; one box of orders to the sexton; one box of Tempe Cemetery Association membership applications; three boxes of lot care records; one box of burial slips; two boxes of ephemera related to legal paperwork, correspondence, and other records; and two boxes of miscellaneous records.  Another part of this collection is a record book that includes the articles of incorporation, by-laws, and meeting minutes for the Tempe Cemetery Association, from 1897 until 1926.

In addition, the collection contains index cards alphabetized by the name of individuals buried in the cemetery, and ephemera related to legal paperwork and correspondence.  The records in this collection provide information about the identity and locations of individuals buried in the cemetery, the cost of cemetery lots and burial, the maintenance of cemetery lots, local mortuaries, and the history and general operation of the cemetery.

RELATED MATERIALS: Double Butte Cemetery report by the Family History Society of Arizona, 1995 (copy of report also available in the Research Library).