The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

This past week we have received more information about the subject of last week’s column: Maude (Baim) Brown. Her little autograph book, discovered in Dayton in 2019, holds a series of handwritten messages dated 1912-1923.

We received a call from Marilyn Groom, of Waitsburg. Marilyn’s parents, Harold and Marianne White were close friends with Rodney and Donna Belle Brown. Rodney is the late son of Maude and Homer Brown.

Maude’s autograph book contains an early message from her future husband Homer:

Dear Friend,

Sailing down the stream of life in your little birch bark canoe.

May you have a pleasant journey, with just room enough for two.

Your friend, Homer

Waitsburg Wash, Aug. 11, 1912

I located the resting place of Maude and Homer at Mountain View Cemetery in Walla Walla. There I learned that Homer was born in 1893 and passed away in 1967. Maude was born in 1898 and died in 1980.

This was confirmed when I was put in touch with Susan Small, Maude, and Homer’s granddaughter. She and her husband, Joe, live on Valley Grove Road, the old family homestead at Dry Creek.

Homer and Maude Brown had three children Rodney, Eden, and Merry. Rodney was Susan and her twin sister Sharon’s father, and he passed away in 2010. Their mother, Donna Belle, passed away in August 2020 at the age of 99.

Merry Brown Smith, 88, lives in the Tri-Cities. Susan was kind enough to put me in touch with her Aunt Merry, who helped fill in the picture of her mother, Maude (Baim) Brown.

“I vaguely remember the autograph book,” said Merry. “Of course, I was just a little kid. I was born the year Rodney turned 17. We’re all so pleased that it’s been found. We have no idea where it would have been or who had it. It will be so interesting to read.”

According to Merry, her mother was born in Umapine, an unincorporated community in Umatilla County, Oregon, south of Walla Walla. Maude and her brother, Ralph, lived with two uncles, who were farmers there. Later they moved to the Waitsburg-Huntsville area. Maude attended school in Huntsville before transferring to Waitsburg High School. By this time, Maude and Homer were good friends, having met not long before writing his note to her in February 1912. Maude was 15 years old at that time.

“Mother became smitten with him,” says Merry, “and was sure he was the one she wanted to marry. But our parents were very conservative Methodists. They told her she had to wait until she was 21.”

Meanwhile, Homer, who came from a poor farming family himself, quit school after the 8th grade to help support the family farm. While still a very young man, he was given the opportunity to “prove” some land in Idaho. Merry said her father talked about this as the loneliest time of his life, working to clear and cultivate the land without being able to see Maude.

“I have a bunch of letters my dad wrote her when he was homesteading in Idaho before they married,” said Merry, who got her name because she was born late in the year, “when Mamma had Christmas on her mind.”

Maude graduated from Waitsburg High School in 1916. Homer had sold his land in Idaho and moved back to Waitsburg.

“He went into business with another man at the A&B Grocery in Waitsburg,” Merry says. “But he only did that for about a year, then went back to farming.”

Homer and Maude were married on October 16, 1919, when Maude was 21 and Homer was 26. They bought the land at Dry Creek and built a farming life there. In 1946 came the move to Columbia County. The home they lived in is still located off Highway 12, just west of Lewis and Clark Trail State Park. For many years it was the home of the pair’s daughter Eden and her husband, Phil White.

“We were all raised there,” said Merry. “We all graduated from Waitsburg High School. I graduated in 1956.”

Merry says her mother, Maude, taught piano when still in high school, and later in life enjoyed working at the Waitsburg library. I was tickled by the last story Merry told me over the phone:

“When my mother was 18, her uncles bought a car. I’m pretty sure it was a Ford Model T. Of course, all they knew was horses and buggies. They didn’t know how to drive. Someone had to teach them. Well, they were busy with harvest, and Maude was 18. So, they sent her to the dealer to learn how to drive it. When she got back, she taught her uncles how to drive.”

Though not a traditional conversation, this connection to Maude was an unexpected and welcomed surprise.