The Lambrecht Cemetery Association of Pierce County, Nebraska is a cemetery association originally incorporated in 1883 as a cemetery association in the State of Nebraska pursuant to the statutes of the State of Nebraska in existence on the date of its incorporation. Those same or similar state statutes pertaining to cemetery associations are now found in Article 5 of Chapter 12 of the Revised Statutes of the State of Nebraska. (Neb. Rev. Stat. 12-501, et. seq.)

As was true in 1883 and is true today, a cemetery association is formed by a group of individuals, not less than five in number, desiring to establish a legal entity to acquire title to a tract of real estate for the purpose of establishing and maintaining thereafter and thereon a burial ground for deceased family members of the members comprising the membership of the cemetery association. These state statutes permit a cemetery association to acquire real estate for cemetery purposes via gift, purchase, or eminent domain. In the situation of the formation of the predecessor in name of the Lambrecht Cemetery Association, the real estate upon which the Lambrecht Cemetery is situated was donated/gifted to the Cemetery Association in consideration of the Cemetery Association transferring/gifting a Lot, or eight burial spaces, to the donors, August and Louise Lambrecht.

To become a member of a cemetery association, you must own a burial space in the burial ground owned by the cemetery association. Membership entitles the member to participate at all annual and special meetings of the membership, to serve as an officer of the cemetery association, and the privilege to be, upon death, buried in the cemetery in your owned burial space. An exception to the above is that the Lambrecht Cemetery Association has permitted several individuals to make a donation to the Lambrecht Cemetery Association equal to the cost of a burial space. This permits the individual to be a member of the Lambrecht Cemetery Association, participating in its meetings as a member, but with no thought of being buried in the Lambrecht Cemetery upon the individual’s death.

Membership also entails duties and responsibilities upon the members. After the costs of acquiring real estate for a cemetery, the real estate does need to be maintained. This maintenance is a financial requirement of the members of the cemetery association. Money to pay these maintenance costs is raised by the sale of burial spaces and/or assessments upon the members. In the case of the Lambrecht Cemetery Association, monetary assessments were annual levied upon the members of the Association. The state statutes provide that if annual assessments are not paid by a member for three years or more, the members of the cemetery association may reclaim the burial space or spaces owned by the non-paying member and resell it to a new member. Due to the close-knit community of the members of the Lambrecht Cemetery Association, no reclaiming process was ever instituted and eventually, in the mid-1950s, annual assessments were eliminated. Thereafter, the main sources of revenue for the Lambrecht Cemetery came from the sale of burial spaces and donations from its members and other interested parties. In 2019, burial spaces which had been sold many many years prior and never utilized for the burial of the original owners or their family members, were reclaimed by a legal process and offered again for sale.

The current members of the Lambrecht Cemetery Association of Pierce County, Nebraska and the burial space(s) which they own are: