Yes, she does believe the museum is haunted, confides Jeanne Schultz Angel, curator of the Dunham-Hunt Museum in St. Charles.
“But I don’t want our museum to be known just for ghost stories,” she said.
That probably won’t happen, because the stately 19th Century brick building on Cedar Avenue that houses the museum is chock-full of other fascinating local lore as well.
Still, the ghost stories are appealing.
Ursula Bielski wrote about them recently in her book “Chicago Haunts; Ghostly Lore of the Windy City” (Lake Claremont Press, $15).
“Mysterious noises and sensations abounded in the parlors and bedroom of this landmark overlooking the Fox River,” Bielski noted.
Angel said she believes in the haunting because sometimes items in an exhibit are moved, lights are switched off or on, or window blinds are moved to a different position, all mysteriously.
But she believes the disruptions may disappear, or at least become less frequent, after today, when the museum officially opens again after being shuttered for two years.
Some people believe that the most recent ghost to invade the old dwelling was that of Jane Dunham, the museum’s founder and a longtime St. Charles-area resident, whose spirit was upset about the closing.
“There were a couple of times that I felt that Jane was there,” said Dorothy Hultgren of Geneva, former curator at the museum. “Other people have also said that they really felt a presence.”
While alive, Dunham most definitely had a strong presence.
“She was a one-of-a-kind lady,” Hultgren said.
“She was very independent, she told you exactly what she was thinking,” added Larry Mulholland, St. Charles city administrator who served on the board of the Dunham-Hunt Society. “When she wanted to accomplish something and she set her mind to it, there was no stopping her.”
In 1980, what Jane Dunham wanted was to open a museum to honor the memory of her family and the local history of Wayne and St. Charles. When she heard that the Hunt house, an 1841 red brick Greek Revival-style home on the east side of town, was for sale, she bought it and began to fill it with artifacts, many from her childhood.
Dunham was born in what is popularly known as Dunham Castle, a medieval-looking 1883 mansion tucked back in the woods on the corner of Dunham and Army Trail Roads in Wayne. Her grandfather, Mark Dunham, built the house he patterned after chateaux he saw while traveling in France. The Dunhams were famous for importing Percherons to the United States, a strong horse needed to pull the just-invented McCormick reaper. Before farmers began using tractors, Oaklawn Farm in Wayne, where Jane Dunham grew up, was reputed to be the largest draft horse farm in the country.
The Dunham-Hunt Museum is filled with remembrances of that era, such as a safe where Mark Dunham kept valuables, equine paintings, trophies, a courting chair and a punchbowl trophy from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
Jane’s mother was a distant relative of the Wards, another interesting local family with a rich background. Their history is chronicled in the museum as well, starting with pictures of Col. Joseph Ward and his wife, Prudence, who lived in Newton, Mass., during the Revolutionary War. Silver pistols featured in the colonel’s picture were given to him by George Washington for bravery on the battlefield at Bunker Hill.
And then there is the Hunt family itself, longtime owners of the building housing the museum, which was the first brick building erected in town and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is constructed from bricks made by the Penny Brickyard (now Baker Memorial Park) directly across the street.
Maj. Bela Thaxter Hunt, also rumored to haunt the museum, was born in Massachusetts in 1812. He came to St. Charles (then called Charleston) from Boston in 1836 and bought 200 acres. With two other local entrepreneurs, he erected the first frame structure and helped build a dam. He ran many businesses, including a hotel, a mercantile store, a paper mill, a tannery and a lumber and grain business. In 1841, he was elected the first Kane County treasurer. Bela’s wife, Harriet Lathrop of New York, was a descendant of William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony.
Bela and Harriet Hunt’s son, Frank Hunt, served three terms as mayor of St. Charles. Frank’s nephew, Edwin Hunt, served one term.
Descendants of the Hunt family lived in the house until Jane Dunham purchased it. It retains much of the original flooring, trim, windows, doors, door hardware and hand-sawn siding.
Jane Dunham loved to tell stories of her childhood in Wayne and St. Charles, Hultgren said.
“Jane was born in the castle,” she said. “She had an interesting life. Before she came back to the Fox Valley, she had been in Chicago and had her own business making floral arrangements for hotels. When she moved back here, her dream was to open a museum.
“She worked very hard to get it all together and to keep it open. She loved having school children here. She would sit them down and tell them all about her life.”
Jane Dunham kept the museum open with the help of the Dunham-Hunt Society until her death, at age 88, in 1995. She had arranged that at her death the museum would be deeded to the city, and left funding to operate it to the St. Charles Heritage Society.
She made these arrangements with the expectation that the museum could remain open. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. “The former director of the Heritage Center decided to close it (in 1995) and used it for storing archives of the center rather than as a museum,” Angel said. That director left in 1996, however, and Angel arrived in June of 1997. “When I came here, it was a disaster,” she said.
But Angel swiftly took inventory and started making plans to get the museum back up and running, per Jane Dunham’s vision, within a year. So far, she’s on target. Nine rooms in the rambling 17-room structure will be open, and next year a couple of other rooms will be opened. In the future, Angel hopes to open the basement, where the original kitchen was located.
Angel, 26, a Naperville native now living in Chicago, came to St. Charles after working at the museum at Illinois State University and at the Famine Museum in Strokestown, County Roscommon, Ireland.
Other local groups have helped Angel get the museum ready again for visitors. The Pottawatomie Garden Club of St. Charles has taken over restoration of the landscaping as a project celebrating the club’s 70th anniversary.
“We’re not going to take everything out and put everything new in,” said Cynthia Foster, co-chairwoman of the project. “Many people over the years, including Jane Dunham, have contributed to the yard, and we don’t want to throw away things people have donated.” The yard has been divided into three areas and will be replanted in stages, she said, beginning with the front of the house.
“We will move some plantings and put in annuals this spring, then perennials in the fall,” Foster said. “We will probably end up doing a Victorian theme somewhere down the road, but there was a lot of living done in that house between the 1840s and the 1950s, so we could pick any one of those eras to showcase.”
The property also includes some historical buildings that weren’t originally there. Attorney Lynn Cavallo of St. Charles wants to organize local attorneys to help sponsor the restoration of the Steven Sanborn Jones Law Office, which was moved from east Main Street to behind the Dunham-Hunt Museum in the mid-1980s. This tiny building was said to function as the first Kane County Courthouse.
“If something isn’t done, it definitely will be lost,” Cavallo said.
Also on the grounds is the Shelby Schoolhouse bell tower from the 1854 school building that was located on the corner of Illinois and 5th Streets.
“There’s so much work to be done around here,” said Patty Thayer, a member of the board of the Heritage Center, while on a tour of the house.
At least it has begun, and that would please Jane Dunham, Angel believes.
Although she doesn’t like to talk about specific plans as she walks through the museum, she talks more frankly when she’s back in the Heritage Center museum a few blocks away.
“We tried to stay with Jane’s vision as much as possible,” she said, “but in some ways I couldn’t, and I didn’t want Jane to hear.”
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The Dunham-Hunt Museum, 304 Cedar Ave., St. Charles, is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesdays and Sundays. For information, call 630-584-6967.
