Dave Sverko (seated) with middle school students Adam Channel, Sadie Pepper and Morgan Matthews in 2000. Back in 2000, students of Ryan Olson Day’s Options Class at the Mendocino Middle School created an oral history project with the help of Steve Jordan and a grant obtained by Deena Zarlin. They made audio recordings of their interviews with twelve “Old Timers” who told these children what it [...]
Photograph of the marble grave monument of Mary F. Freathy, located in Evergreen Cemetery. The stone has a bas relief of clasped hands at the top and is crowned by an arch of ivy leaves, supported by scrolled brackets. Down in the archives of the Kelley House, I was working on a research project tracing a local family’s name through graveyard records when I found something [...]
Norman de Vall’s sailing cargo ship, Fri, as she enters San Francisco Bay on her ocean voyage from Denmark in 1967. In the late 1800s, schooners like these carried goods to ports all over the world, including the Mendocino Coast. This season’s exhibit at the Kelley House Museum, “Wind & Water: the Nautical Collection of Norman de Vall” showcases antique charts, old navigational instruments and other sea-going [...]
The Bobolink c. 1880, in full sail and fully loaded with lumber. She was a two-masted schooner built in 1868 in Oakland, California by L. S. Allen, with her home port being San Francisco. In 1884, she was sold to Jerome B. Ford of the Mendocino Lumber Company. After a 30-year sailing career, Bobolink wrecked on March 24, 1898, at Kent's Point, south of Mendocino Bay. (Photograph from the Emery [...]