Forestville Oral History
Town Meeting Turns into Reunion
by Simone Wilson
n oral history project
turned into something of
a town reunion October
14 when the Forestville
Chamber of Commerce invited all the
old timers they could think of to a
gathering at the Forestville School.
Old timers and new timers alike
showed up for what turned out to be
a rousing evening of reminiscing.
Dave Henry, owner of
Forestville’s El Molino Pharmacy,
chaired the meeting, which included
a presentation on the Faudre Chair
Company and a slide show of town
photos ranging from the 1800’s to the
present.
For relative newcomers, it was a
chance to meet face to face the folks
whose family names appear on the
local street signs — Davis, Ross
Martinelli, Covey, Nolan and Speer.
For old-timers, it was a chance to see
the scenes of their childhood up on
the screen, and to identify people in
decades-old photos. Newcomers saw
photos of things they’d never seen
before, like the Electric Hotel which
stood near the current Carr’s Drive-in
but was later moved to a location
near Rick’s Garage. One person in
the audience remembered seeing it
burn down in the 1920’s.
Other photos included Tom Silk’s
store, Jewett’s Ice Cream parlor, the
Forestville Motorcycle Club, the
barbershop next to the Forestville
Inn, and the old Rio Dell Resort. The
resort, which featured a rollerskating
rink, was perched on a hill near the
Russian River.
Many pictures brought spontane¬
ous comments from the audience,
turning the evening into something
of an extended family reunion. A
school picture brought a call of,
“That’s my sister in the second row!”
To a picture of Sunshine Camp on
Trenton, someone called out, “That’s
where my mother was born.”
Claude Russell, whose father
George ran the celebrated Auto
Stage, was there. He also showed up
as a boy in some of the photos of the
popular stage. The stage left from the
Russell House on Centre Street and
went through Pocket Canyon to
Guerneville.
Lino Martinelli, who gave
Martinelli Road its name, was there,
to answer questions about tending
his Jackass Hill vineyard. “I still work
Jackass Hill, and my wife says it takes
a jackass to work there,” quipped
Martinelli, who was born in 1905.
Several members of the Sonoma
County Historical Society were also
on hand, including Lorna Drake,
who taught for 35 years at Forestville
School.
The evening also included a
presentation on the Faudre Chair
Company, the county’s first manufac¬
turing enterprise. Starting in the
1860’s, Stuart Faudre, a cabinet
maker from Kentucky, made chairs
which he then loaded on a wagon,
200-400 at a time, and peddled
throughout California, Arizona and
Colorado. The chairs, made of oak
and ash and fitted with seats of
rawhide strips, sold for about $3-$8.
Faudre made about 30,000 of the
chairs, and his successors made
See Reunion, page 15
Russell’s Auto Stage pulls up in front of Forestville’s late great Electric Hotel
14
