Soap Creek Valley · Person
Lorna Grabe
Lorna Grabe— narrator, auditor, mentioned in the Soap Creek Valley oral history series.
narratorauditormentioned
Provenance
- Work
- Former schoolteacher (one-room rural school two years, small town school one year); long-time worker for the Soap Creek Schoolhouse Foundation from 1974
- Interview focus
- Modern settlement
- Where this comes from
- #1 Lorna Grabe, p. 68, narrator profile; the 1999 thesis, p. 39, Table 4 (informant profile); #1 Lorna Grabe, [introduction], contributors / front matter credit; #10 Velma Carter Rawie, p. 81, contributors / front matter credit; SCARC OH 006 finding aid: interview dates and cassette counts; #1 Lorna Grabe, p. 40, printed back index; #7 Charlie Olson, p. 77, p. 86, p. 87, printed back index; #9 Eugene Glender, p. 86, printed back index; #10 Velma Carter Rawie, p. 81, printed back index; #11 Bessie Murphy, p. 47, printed back index; #12 Wanda Marcks Cook, p. 85, printed back index; #14 Charles and Norman Hindes, p. 3, printed back index; the 1999 thesis, p. 5, p. 7, p. 20, p. 22, p. 34, p. 36, p. 37, p. 39, p. 41, p. 60, p. 61, p. 73, p. 95, p. 98, p. 101, p. 109, p. 116, p. 124, p. 126, p. 140, p. 143, p. 144, p. 145, p. 154, p. 199, p. 230, p. 237, people mentioned in the thesis; the 1999 thesis, p. 5, Table 1 citation rule: cited as (Grabe 1990), referenced as (Zybach 1990), #01; the 1989 Auto Tour, p. 2, people named in the Auto Tour; the 1999 thesis, p. 235, p. 236, p. 237, Appendix A, Table A.1 (monograph numbers and titles) and Table A.2 (page counts)
- Accessioned
- From Bob Zybach’s upload, 23 August 2026
Home site
Plotted at Soap Creek Valley, as on Map 9 of the 1999 thesis.
The map could not load. The list below carries the same places.
Sessions
- December 28, 1989 — Lorna Grabe's home, Soap Creek Road, Soap Creek Valley, Benton County, Oregon
Worked on
Where others mention them
Dates they give
- 1630 — Well, it's supposed to grow an inch every ten years. That's what I think we read somewhere, and it's probably three foot thick, so that's 360 years old.
- 1800s — I don't know that either, in the 1800's, mid or late.
- 1900/1905 — we had seven old students come and of these seven old students about four or five of them were from 1900 or 1905, like Merle Moore, Myra Moore Lauridsen
- 1900 — the original deed said that the property was to be used for educational purposes, the one in 1900.
- 1946 — After the War, much of the Camp Adair property was obtained by OSU (see Maps 3 and 16), and families began to move on to adjacent properties. Many of the new families were residential, rather than farmers, and new home construction reflected this change (Grabe 1990).
- 1950 — We were married in 1950.
- 1953-01-04 — I don't know his birthdate (January 4, 1953).
- 1959/1960 — (I have learned that the Boy Scouts used this building for less than three months during 1959 or 1960. They started making wood shakes for the roof but left because of vandalism of their materials.)
- 1960 — No, this house was here; it was eight years old. It was built by the Hollisters.
- 1965 — it was really the instigation of the preservation in that first letter, I would say, in 1965.
- 1965-01-22 — the first letter was started in January 22, 1965, and it was sent to the Benton County Rural School Board at the County Courthouse. It was sent by Mrs. Warren Bacon and Mrs. Dick Nordahl
- 1967 — right here in this one where it tells about the box social which was in 1967, it says "proceeds from the sale will be used to install electricity and to make other improvements."
- 1967-08-18 — August 18, 1967, it says that "the school house is now open to the public,"
- 1967-09-28 — The only date that I have is this one 1967, in August and September 28, 1967 and then this one.
- 1968 — In '68.
- 1968 — I think when we moved out here it was a twenty acre minimum. And now I think it is five or ten, I'm not sure
- 1968 — We came to Oregon in 1968.
- 1968 — We moved out West in 1968 to Oregon. We now live on a wooded acreage in the beautiful Soap Creek Valley with our collie dog and two horses.
- 1968 — There were probably twelve, approximately ten or twelve families living in the valley. We knew everybody that lived here and by name.
- 1969/1970 — apparently replanted them back which this was done back in about 1969 or '70 or somewhere in there that she did that.
- 1971/1972 — '72, the horse club put new shingles on the school house and repainted it. So they really kept it up even though their main focus wasn't historical exhibits like it is now.
- 1973/1974 — I think Pearl Bacon moved first, it was about 1973 or '74, around in there.
- 1974 — I started my work in 1974, but the Foundation functioned for about 2 or 3 years with open houses
- 1974 — so in the fall of 1974, I put a notice in the paper and sent flyers up and down the valley to the families and had an exhibit of my old textbooks
- 1974 — And after I started in the Foundation in 1974, Louise Hollister and I went down to the school house and cataloged all the original books that were there
- 1974 — have helped collect old photos, histories, early school text books, slates, and desks since 1974.
- 1975 — '75.
- 1975 — No, I don't have those. This one starts in 1975. I don't have the minutes of the earlier one.
- 1975/1980 — No, I did this about ten or fifteen years ago from our old record books from the early ... clerk's record books.
- 1975 — Well, Barb Foster, Dick Foster, Marge Chandler, Archie Chandler, Lorna Grabe, Mona Luebbert, Louise Hollister.
- 1975 — I just found this one this morning that I thought was one of the best open houses we ever had and that was back in 1975.
- 1975-01 — and then in January, I think it was, that I called the neighbors together as many as I could get to reorganize the Foundation
- 1975-10 — It was a rainy day in October when you'd think nobody would come, but we had a fire going in the stove and we served hot spiced tea and cookies
- 1976 — this is in about 19 ... well, this one isn't dated, but it's probably about '76 or so.
- 1976 — "someone phoned Mona," that's Mona Luebbert, "and requested to move the school house to the Salem State Fairgrounds for a Bicentennial Project.
- 1976-10-11 — It was amended in 19 ... October 11, 1976. We got the deed from the North Corvallis Farmer's Union
- 1979 — Well, Hewelett-Packard came here about ten years ago, and so we had a big influx of people ten years ago.
- 1984 — another what I would consider a really visual historic building was an old barn that is down where Dailys are now. That was there just ... just fell down about five years ago.
- 1986 — the two school houses I visited back in Iowa when we were there three or four years ago that were set up as historic sites did not let you go
- 1988 — Ken died just a year ago, so he's not living anymore, but he'd seen the ghost too.
In the Series Index
How to cite this item
The first line is the citation as it is printed in the original. Use it when you cite the work itself. Use the second when you cite this page.
- As printed
- The Zybach Collection, Soap Creek Valley series: Lorna Grabe (person record).
- This page
- Soap Creek Valley: Lorna Grabe. America's School Trust Library, The Zybach Collection. https://schooltrusts.org/collections/zybach/soap-creek/people/lorna-grabe/
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