Help Us Save the Historic Charles Brown House

Suzanne and Jack Darley and Wendy Stone

Orange shirts brightened the house and yard of the Charles and Martha Brown House Saturday, May 21, when thirteen people participated in the 2011 OSU Day of Community Service at the Stayton area project.

Half the volunteers wielded rakes, shovels, brooms, wheelbarrows, and clippers to weed, mulch, fill trenches, and beautify the grounds while the other half used scrapers and elbow grease to strip layers of wallpaper from the front parlor and hall.

Jack Darley, an OSU business graduate who was born in the Brown House when it functioned as Stayton’s first hospital in the 1930's, admitted that he never imagined he'd be back where he was born removing wallpaper.

The Charles and Martha Brown House restoration is the focus of the Santiam Heritage Foundation (SHF). Since 2001, an incredible amount of sweat equity and effort has been expended to save the 1903 Queen Anne-style home just south of the Stayton Public Library. The exterior of the house is nearly completed but there remains much to be done to return the interior to its former grandeur. Donations and volunteers are always needed.

SHF Board President Wendy Stone, whose family owned the Brown House for a number of years, was delighted at the amount of work accomplished by the OSU alumni and friends. "We are all proud of the progress that has been made."

Special thanks go to the OSU Alumni Association for providing the orange shirts, Jacqulin Kirby of the Bird & Hat Inn for morning snacks, Carol Zolkoske for providing lunch, and to the Abigail Scott Duniway Chapter National Society Daughters of the American Revolution for providing dessert.

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SHF Receives DAR Grant

The Santiam Heritage Foundation has been awarded an Historic Preservation Grant from the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR) to help replace the old furnace in the Charles and Martha Brown House. This is the first year for DAR grants, and applications were solicited from across the nation. It is a matching grant, which means that SHF must raise an equivalent dollar amount ($1500) in order to receive the funds.

The ladies of the local Abigail Scott Duniway Chapter NSDAR have been involved in the undertaking as well. The grant process required a DAR chapter to sponsor the organization requesting the grant, so the local DAR wrote a letter that was included in the grant application. At their May meeting, the Abigail Scott Duniway Chapter voted to make a donation toward the matching funds need.

People wishing to help match this generous donation may contribute by check with the word "furnace" in the memo line and mailed to the Santiam Heritage Foundation at PO Box 161, Stayton, OR 97383.

An Appeal for Support

A great deal has been accomplished in the restoration of the Charles and Martha Brown House over the past decade. The Santiam Heritage Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation and continues to welcome assistance through direct, tax-deductible contributions, Foundation memberships, gifts of appreciation, bequests in wills and through any of a variety of other methods.

The Foundation has received many significant grants from local and statewide organizations. We are grateful for the community's support, generosity, and spirit of volunteerism, and we are encouraged to continue this project at a vigorous pace. Donated labor and materials have helped bring about the success that you see today, but a great deal of money is still required to complete a project of this magnitude.

We support the hiring of local craftspeople and artisans and hope through this restoration process to invest in the community while recreating a venue for social and cultural events to satisfy the community’s needs in this grand mansion -- a jewel of Stayton’s past.

For more information send us e-mail.
You may also call Santiam Heritage Foundation at (503) 769-8860 or Bob Pendleton at (503) 769-5863.