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Preservation2001 Farmhouse Restoration ProjectIn 2001, the Oregon Parks Department issued a matching grant to help repair damage to the 1851 Geer farmhouse. Sills under the west portion of the house and corner post on the south end were badly rotted. In an effort to employ methods and materials common to the time of the original construction, the owners employed Greg Olson, a regional historic preservation contractor, to undertake the restoration. Two 8” by 10” by 36', and one 8” by 10” by 18' sills were cut from logs by Greg with a hand axe. Using a hand augur and chisels, the logs were mortised to receive both stud and joist tenons along three sides of the house. Two 8” by 8” by 15' corner posts were similarly built. Many rotted stud and joist ends were replaced, as was some siding and the decking on the old veranda-style porch.
Farm House Restoration Project Archival Preservation, 2009 –The preservation of the many historical documents for public use is a major tenant of the Foundation. Digitizing, cataloging and preserving these archives and artifacts for future use will effectively demonstrate our connectedness over the centuries to the land as the major source of food, well being and life in the Willamette Valley. These principals form the basis of good land stewardship and the agrarian way of life.The majority of our archival collection revolves around Musa Geer, who was born on the farm in 1872. She graduated from Willamette University (then a teacher's college) in 1895 and taught in this area until she went to New York in 1903 at the invitation of her cousin Homer Davenport, who was by then a well-established cartoonist with Hearst newspapers. After spending the summer in New York, Musa decided to stay, picking up freelance jobs and living in boarding homes for women. Musa worked for Hearst in several capacities – as an assistant to an advice columnist, and selling ads. She also did modeling for Lord and Taylor, and gradually moved into design work, establishing her own studio to do artwork and covers for magazines and catalogues. In 1910 she came back to the Northwest to live with her mother, Eglantine, and brother, Arch, on a homestead in Goodnoe Hills, a tiny place near the banks of the Columbia River on the Washington State side, where she spent the next fifty years. Musa ran a general store, and was the postmistress for Goodnoe Hills. She also had rooms for travelers and a dance hall in that little building. Because she had learned the local Native American dialect as a child, she became a translator, scribe and liaison for the Rock Creek tribe. She also wrote a weekly column on Goodnoe Hills for the Goldendale Sentinel and corresponded with friends and relatives all over the country. She was, by all accounts, beautiful, smart, full of life, happy, and very independent. She remained single, though she had many suitors whose florid letters to her are scattered through her collection. Musa appears to have kept nearly every letter she ever received. The earliest family documents are from the 1870s. The letters paint a richly detailed personal portrait of a woman forging her life as an individual when the meanings of family, home, and vocation were caught in a tidal wave of social change. All of Musa's letters and documents came with her and were stored in four steamer trunks at GeerCrest farm when she came there to live in 1961. She died in 1968, at the age of 96. Her archives remained at the farm in an attic room. 
Homer Davenport's classic book about growing up in Silverton circa 1880 |
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2010 • GeerCrest Farm & Historical Society Frontispiece from The Country Boy by Homer Davenport resourced from Homer Davenport: The Country Boy by Mickey Hickman. |
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