E. F. MULKEY, M. D., a retired physician and minister residing at Sherman, Texas, who is now serving as county treasurer, was born in Monroe county, Kentucky, December 16, 1841. His parents were the Rev. John Newton and Nancy (Lowe) Mulkey, both of whom were natives of the Blue Grass state. The father was a distinguished minister of the Christian church and for many years was widely known in this connection throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, and southern Illinois. He was associated with Alexander Campbell in his important work of organizing the Christian church and became one of its pioneer preachers, devoting his entire life to the proclamation of the gospel as understood by that denomination. He died at Glasgow, Kentucky, in 1881.
Dr. Mulkey was reared upon a farm near Bowling Green, Kentucky, until 1856, when the parents removed with their family to southern Illinois, settling in Perry county east of the town of Tamaroa. He had acquired a good education and at the time of the outbreak of the Civil war he was teaching school near Benton in Franklin county. He decided to enlist in the Confederate service and, going to Tennessee, joined Morgan’s command, remaining in that service on the border line between the two armies until the close of hostilities. Following the war he located at Rutherford Station in Gibson county, Tennessee, where he lived for more than two years. He then returned to southern Illinois, where he spent four years, after which he again went to Tennessee. In the meantime he had learned and followed the carpenter’s trade, but later he studied preparatory to the practice of medicine and entered upon the active work of the profession. In 1879 he was graduated from the medical department of Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee, and in 1880 he came to Texas, settling in Grayson county, where he continued in the practice of medicine for many years with excellent success. He is now retired, however, and he is practically retired from the active work of the ministry, for he had become a regularly ordained preacher of the Christian church. He is still deeply interested in its work, however, and yet occupies the pulpit occasionally. In 1902 he was elected county treasurer over four other candidates, receiving a majority of seventeen hundred and twenty-three over his nearest competitor.
In 1863, Dr. Mulkey was united in marriage to Miss Mary D. Fowler, of Tennessee, and they have one son, Hon. O. C. Mulkey, who is a successful lawyer at Commerce, Texas, and a distinguished citizen of the state, who represented his district in the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth sessions of the general assembly of Texas. Dr. Mulkey is a man of fine character, of broad mentality, of liberal culture, high principles and genuine worth and is greatly beloved in every community where his professional services have been exerted for the physical and spiritual welfare of mankind.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, p. 714.