Horner Museum Oral History Collection, 1952-1993

Title: Horner Museum Oral History Collection, 1952-1993

Predominant Dates: 1975-1991

ID: OH 010

Primary Creator: Horner Museum

Extent: 9.8 cubic feet. More info below.

Arrangement: The collection is arranged in three series: I. Audiocassettes, 1975-1992; 2. Transcripts and Project Files, 1952-1992; and 3. Administrative Records, 1973-1993.

Languages of Materials: English [eng]

The Horner Museum Oral History Collection consists of more than 250 oral history interviews conducted or assembled by the Horner Museum. The interviews address a variety of topics including the stories of Oregon State University faculty, students, and academic departments; the history of Corvallis and Benton County, Oregon; evolving economic and cultural perspectives on natural resources in rural Oregon; the life experiences of Native Americans and other ethnic minorities in the region; and the recollections of Americans born in the first few decades of the twentieth century.

All of the audiocassettes held in this collection have been digitized and these files are available upon patron request. Transcripts of the interview for Francis Brown (1980), Lena Hamblin (1988), and Norborne Berkeley (1983) have been digitized and are available upon request.

The Horner Museum Oral History Collection (OH 10) is chiefly comprised of oral history materials either generated by the museum's staff or produced by OSU faculty, students and staff and subsequently accessioned into the museum's collections. The collection consists of audiocassettes and, in most cases, a coupled project file which might contain a preliminary or finalized transcript as well as research notes and photographs. The collection also contains administrative records including correspondence, interview abstracts, release forms, photographic negatives, cassette tape logs and various other work files.

In its present form, the Horner Museum Oral History Collection is significantly smaller than was once the case, as many of the dedicated oral history projects conducted by the museum have been removed and described as distinct collections of their own. A full itemization of these collections is contained in the Processing Information of this finding aid.

The extant contents of the Horner Museum Oral History Collection are comprised mostly of two sets of materials: interviews conducted by museum staff with regional figures of interest or in support of small thematic projects; and assorted interviews conducted by OSU students for class purposes. The collection also includes a significant cache of material produced by individuals - likely community members or OSU staff - not obviously associated with the museum or with a course of university study.

The interviews conducted by Horner staff tended to focus on one of four general areas: university history, regional community history, natural resource use in Oregon, and the experience of ethnic minorities in Oregon, with a particular focus on Native American history. Within these groupings, several small projects can be identified. Horner staff, for example, devoted time to interviewing alumni visiting campus for Golden Jubilee celebrations or Memorial Union Alumni Day. Likewise, concentrated efforts to document the experience of Corvallis-area doctors (Bahrs and Bell) and the local Jewish population (Goheen, Goldberg, Gordon, Loney, Orzech, Philipp and Schecter) are evident within the collection. Similar initiatives sought to capture the stories of the DeMoss Family Lyric Bards of Oregon, the Wallis Nash family, the Winema National Forest and Harney County's Welsh community. Though many interviewers contributed to the museum's efforts, the majority of the sessions actually produced by the organization were conducted by Jennifer A. Lee, sometimes in collaboration with her husband, Royal G. Jackson, an OSU Forestry faculty member.

Additional interviews with residents of Harney County (Cross, G. Crow, J. Crow, Dodson, Fine, Guinie, Heinz, Jenkins), conducted in 1979, address interactions between Paiute Native Americans and early white settlers in the Burns area, early 20th century life in Burns, and the construction of the Oregon Northwestern Railroad between Seneca and Burns. Several of these interviews were transcribed by staff and volunteers of the Harney County Library in 2006.

Interviews with several notable Oregon State faculty and administrators are held within the collection. Prominent among these names are: Alan B. Berg, Eva Blackwell, Walter B. Bollen, Fred Decker, John C. Garman, Delmer M. Goode, E.B. Lemon, Harriet Moore, Miriam Orzech, Dan W. Poling, T.J. Starker, Betty Lynd Thompson and Chih H. Wang.

The student projects held in this collection mostly appear to be the product of class assignments, often within the Department of Anthropology. Many student interviews were conducted with members of a given interviewer's family and, as such, tend to document the lives of Americans born in the early decades of the 1900s. Also included is a 1986 student project of some consequence - 16 interviewees - focusing on the local population of ethnic minorities. An additional student project, 1981's "Contemporary Lifestyles at Oregon State University," analyzed student attitudes toward controversial issues including recreational drug use and pre-marital sex.

Biographical and content notes have been included with each set of interviews as available. These notes are generally included in Series I with finding aid entries for specific sets of audiocassettes. In certain cases where a transcript or project file remains extant but an audiocassette does not, the biographical and content notes have been included in Series II. Likewise, though they are no longer relevant to internal SCARC processes, Horner Museum accession numbers have been retained as numerous documents within the collection refer to projects using these numbers and no other identifiers.

The collection's audiocassettes were digitized by the Special Collections and Archives Research Center in 2016. Access .mp3 derivatives are available for researcher use upon request. The transcript for the interview with Francis Brown (Box-Folder 13.27) has been digitized and is available upon request.

Transcripts of the interview for Francis Brown (1980), Lena Hamblin (1988), and Norborne Berkeley (1983) have been digitized and are available upon request.

Established by Oregon Agricultural College and Professor John Horner in 1925, the Museum of the Oregon Country was a place where people could "see the world" without leaving Corvallis, Oregon. It was renamed the John B. Horner Museum of the Oregon Country in 1936, three years after he died, and became commonly known as the Horner Museum. The museum housed an eclectic mix of artifacts, photographs, and archival materials; supported an active oral history program from the mid 1970s through the early 1990s; and was the repository for many - perhaps most - of the oral history projects conducted by Oregon State University faculty, students, and departments during that time. Jennifer A. Lee was the Horner Museum staff member that worked most closely with the oral history program, sometimes in collaboration with her husband, Forestry professor Royal G. Jackson.

The museum was located in various buildings on the Oregon State University campus, until it moved to its final campus location in Gill Coliseum in 1951. In 1995 the 60,000-artifact museum officially closed to the public due to statewide budget cutbacks resulting from the passage of Oregon Ballot Measure 5 (1990). Not long after, certain of the museum's records, including its vast oral history collection, were transferred to the Oregon State University Archives. Ten years later, in 2005, a final agreement for transfer of physical custody of the remainder of the museum's collections was signed between Oregon State University and the Benton County Historical Society. The society subsequently transferred the Horner Collection materials to their facility in Philomath, Oregon.

More Extent Information: 418 audiocassettes and 103 photographs; 20 boxes

Statement on Access: Collection is open for research. The collection's audiocassettes were digitized by the Special Collections and Archives Research Center in 2016. Access .mp3 derivatives are available for researcher use upon request.

Acquisition Note: The materials were transferred to the Oregon State University Archives from the Horner Museum in 1996.

Related Materials:

At least fourteen of the Special Collections and Archives Research Center's oral history and manuscript collections contain components of, or were created entirely from, content that once resided in the Horner Museum Oral History Collection. These collections are itemized in the Processing Information included in this finding aid.

SCARC holdings also include three additional collections documenting the activities of the Horner Museum: Friends of Horner Museum Records (MSS FriendsofHorner), Horner Museum Photographs (P 159) and Horner Museum Records (RG 199).

SCARC also holds the personal papers of several OSU faculty who were interviewed for deposit in this collection. These collections include, among others, the Eva Blackwell and William A. Frater Family Collection (MSS BlackwellFrater), Roland Eugene Dimick Papers (MSS Dimick), John Garman Photographic Collection (P 095), E. B. Lemon Papers (MSS LemonEB), Dan Poling Papers (MSS Poling), Charles R. Ross Papers (MSS Ross), T. J. Starker Collection (MSS Starker), Betty Lynd Thompson Papers (MSS Thompson), Chih H. Wang Papers (MSS Wang), Melvin N. Westwood Papers (MSS Westwood), and the G. Burton Wood Papers (MSS Wood).

Preferred Citation: Horner Museum Oral History Collection (OH 010), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.

Processing Information:

In its present form, the Horner Museum Oral History Collection is significantly smaller than was once the case, as many of the dedicated oral history projects conducted by the museum have been removed and described as distinct collections of their own. These collections include, either in part or in full:

Oregon Pioneers Oral History Collection (OH 01); Judith Carol Carlson Oral History Interview with Robert C. Ingalls (OH 02); History of Oregon State University Oral Histories and Sound Recordings (OH 03); Basques of Harney County, Oregon, Oral History Collection (OH 04); Oral History Interviews, Personal Histories, and Sound Recordings Collection on Agriculture, Forestry, and Oregon History (OH 05); Soap Creek Valley History Project Oral Histories (OH 06); A.L. Strand Oral History Collection (OH 07); CH2M Hill, Inc. Oral Histories (OH 19); Oral Histories of Northern Cheyenne Descendants of the Battle of Little Bighorn (OH 20); Paul H. Jensen Oral Histories (OH 22); Oral Histories of the Benton County (Or.) Courthouse (OH 23); Oral Histories of the Oregon State University Microbiology Department (OH 24); Oral Histories of the James Cant Ranch (John Day Valley, Oregon) (OH 25); Royal G. Jackson Papers (MSS JacksonR)

Arrangement and description by Chris Petersen, Angela Barker and Elizabeth Nielsen

Horner Museum
Jackson, Royal G.
Lee, Jennifer A.

Ball, W. Waldo.
Benton County (Or.)--History.
Berg, Alan B.
Blackwell, Eva, 1900-1987
Burns (Or.)
Corvallis (Or.)
DeMoss Family Lyric Bards (Musical group)
Dimick, Roland Eugene, 1900-
Forestry schools and education--Oregon--Corvallis.
Forests and forestry--Oregon.
Francis, L. E. (Lawrence Edward)
Garman, John C. (John Clifton)
Goode, Delmer M.
Harney County (Or.)--History.
History of Science
Horner Museum
Indians of North America--Oregon--Interviews.
Jews--Oregon.
Lemon, E. B. (Erwin Bertran), 1889-1979
Local History
Lyne, Floyd J. (Floyd James), 1922-
Nash, W. Gifford (Wallis Gifford), 1867-1920
Natural history--Oregon.
Natural Resources
Oregon Multicultural Archives
Oregon State College--Faculty.
Oregon State College--History.
Oregon State University--Alumni and alumnae.
Oregon State University--Faculty.
Oregon State University--Students.
Oregon State University. College of Forestry
Poling, Dan Williams
Pond, Ronald James, 1939-
Raymond, Louis C.
Ross, Charles R. (Charles Robert), 1908-
Starker, T. J. (Thurman James), 1890-1983
Student activities--Oregon--Corvallis.
Thompson, Betty Lynd
University History
Wang, Chih Hsing, 1917-
Westwood, Melvin N. (Melvin Neil), 1923-
Winema National Forest (Or.)
Wood, G. B. (Gregory Burton), 1909-

Audiocassettes.
Film negatives.
Oral histories (literary genre)
Photographic prints.
Slides (photographs).