A historic house is being abandoned, can I do anything to save it?

There is just a wonderful mansion down the road (in the country) from us that is getting to the point that it won't be salvageable. It's an old home built around the turn of the century with a formal library, wonderful woodwork, etc... To make a long story short my husband and I wanted to save it by buying it, but it's been in the family all these years and they don't want to sell. The lady has given up on being able to fix it herself (or her heirs), she says it was her dream to fix it up and she wasn't able to, so it is just going to sit there and as the years go by it will be lost. I guess my question is, is there anything we can do to save this house? It seems a shame that because of one person's stubborness that this piece of history will just crumble away with no one being able to do anything about it. It's not on a historic register, but it was the largest ranch house in the entire 4 counties around here, colonial style, with huge porches to par.