Treasure keeper: Carolyn Hutton to retire from museum

By Kathy Cook Hunter

Carolyn Hutton’s heart belongs to Silverton, although she resides with her husband, Marlin, in Salem.

“I’m a third-generation Silvertonian, and so is Marlin,” said Hutton, adding she and Marlin graduated from Silverton High School.

As she prepares to retire as the volunteer curator for the Silverton Country Historical Museum, Hutton reflected on what she’s learned and contributed to the museum in the last decade.

Formerly a nurse, Hutton, 67, spent 30 years working in hospitals, including at Emmanuel in Portland, Silverton Hospital and Salem Hospital.

“It turned out I liked it because of the varied experiences and pace of medicine,” she said. “That’s part of why I like the museum, too – because of all the different things going on.”

How she came to volunteer as the curator at the Silverton non-profit was family related. “My mother-in-law, Cora Olsen Hutton, was volunteering in the historical society and I got interested in genealogy and going to the museum to see what my mother-in-law and other relatives had donated to it. The Huttons have been here since 1856.”

Organized in the early 1970s, the society opened its museum on South Water Street in 1975.

“By 1990, the museum and the society were well focused,” Hutton said, “but volunteers were short to take on the projects they’d been doing. By the time I joined they were getting tired.”

On the positive side, she added, “The museum was being run by people with a vested interest in preserving Silverton’s history because they were descendants of pioneers or because of a love of history.”

As a society member, Hutton trained a year under the tutelage of Betty Hollin, museum curator for 15 years, and became the curator in 2000.

As a child growing up on a farm outside town, Hutton’s interest in history had been minimal. History of the area was not taught at school in those days, but “I loved the history of our farm and historical novels,” she said.

Now she loves Silverton history and passing it on to others.

“June Drake [an early Silverton photographer who brought attention to the beauty and uniqueness of the Silver Falls forestland that eventually became Oregon’s largest park] tried to start a historical society in the early ‘30s, but it didn’t take off,” she said. “The city’s centennial in 1954 and the state’s centennial in 1959 made our history more huge in people’s minds, and the next generation realized the need for a group and a museum.

“There’s a point where you realize, ‘Who’s going to carry this on, and the stories?’”

With that in mind, Hollin had developed museum tours for the local schoolchildren. Hutton has continued them, extending the invitation to the rural schools outside of town as well as to Eugene Field third-grade students. The children tour the museum every spring.

Another area she supervises and participates in is organizing and preserving pictures, many of which are donated family photos; others are from local newspapers and other sources.

“One of my first jobs was to organize 14 or 15 boxes of photos,” Hutton said. She enjoyed it so much that she would take a box a night home to organize contents put there in helter-skelter fashion. She set up the system that’s used today where museum file cabinets are full of file folders holding information on mills, homes, businesses, families, churches and other subjects comprising Silverton’s yesteryears.

What she likes most about her job is what seems to bring out the detective in her.

“I like helping people find stuff, except when we run in to a blank wall,” she said. “And I’ve loved big projects like organizing the pictures.” Least liked is “forgetting where I put things,” she says with a chuckle. Hutton’s decade-long stint at Silverton Country Museum has been one of rising standards for organization and preservation. “I had some ideas on that line just from visiting museums,” she said. “I knew there were things you could do, should do and dare not do. For example, never do anything with an iron you can’t undo!”

Gaining ideas and inspiration, Hutton researched on the Internet and in books, and conversed with other museum directors. The museum is currently a member of a state museums organization, subscribes to historical publications and has a Web site: silvertonmuseum.com.

“I once learned I’d made a big mistake,” she said. “In the museum basement I’d found some grungy World War I sailor uniforms, so I took them home, washed them and bleached them. Another director was horrified to hear this — ‘You never use bleach!’ she said — and she gave me a list of museum tips. My list has grown from there.”

In 2004 Hutton applied for and received a grant from the American Association of Museums, and a subsequent survey by a museum expert led to better practices in preserving and archiving.

“We already had a rule that no food and no plants come inside the museum,” Hutton said. “He was impressed we had gotten quite a lot of things started.” But, she added, “We still have quite a ways to go.”