Maud L. Eastwood

Maud Lucile Eastwood was born in 1920 in Chitwood, Oregon, a railroad stop on the Yaquina River. For years she ran a beauty salon in Tillamook, and like many collectors of her generation she saved the ornate hardware rescued from Victorian houses as they were torn down. Owning it was not enough; she wanted to know what it was. When she retired in 1972 she turned to doorknobs full time, travelling the country, searching libraries and patent records, and talking with collectors, historians and craftsmen: anyone who could explain how and why the hardware was made. By the late 1970s her own collection, about 1,500 knobs, was thought to be the largest in the United States.

In 1976 she published The Antique Doorknob, the first collector's manual for the hobby. For the first time, people who had been quietly saving knobs and escutcheons had a book that named what they were holding: the makers, the patterns, the materials and the decades. Old-House Journal praised it, and letters began to arrive from collectors across the country.

When Rich and Faye Kennedy wanted to reach those collectors, Maud gave them the list of people who had bought her book. In March 1977 the first issue of The Doorknob Collector went out to about fifteen of those readers. Within three issues it reached over 150, and in September 1981 the group that formed around it met in Waverly, Iowa, and became the Antique Doorknob Collectors of America.

Maud was member number 2. In 1983 the club gave her a lifetime seat on its Board of Directors, later electing her Emeritus Director, and in 1987 she served as President. She attended every convention through 2000, helped host the 2007 convention in Portland, and wrote often for the newsletter and for outside publications. Over two decades she followed her first book with further reference works on builders' hardware, and members turned to her as the person who would know.

In 2000, at the convention in Minneapolis, the club named her the first recipient of the Arnie Fredrick Memorial Award. She said she would do it all again, even without the recognition. Maud Eastwood died in 2014, and that year's convention booklet carried a tribute to her.