Hessel community near Sebastopol started as chicken ranch

Hessel, a small community 5 miles southeast of Sebastopol, gets its name from the Hessel family, who settled there in the 19th century.

Andrew Hessel, from southern Germany, immigrated to the East Coast of the U.S. in his early thirties. Little by little, he continued moving west. He was in Indiana when he met and married his wife Anna. They had one child before moving to Illinois and several more before coming to California in 1886, where they started a chicken ranch just off the Sebastopol-Petaluma Road.

Anna lived there only a few years - she died while giving birth to her son Benjamin, who survived and lived well into adulthood. She also left behind seven other children, four under the age of 10. One of them, Esther, was just 3 when her mother died. As they grew up, several Hessel siblings followed their father into farming. Esther went to a Teacher’s College and, after graduating in 1909, returned home to teach in the new Eucalyptus School.

A few years earlier, the Petaluma-Santa Rosa Railroad had been established to serve Petaluma, Sebastopol, Forestville and Santa Rosa. It was a “juice” line, one of several electric interurban railroads serving the Bay Area during that period. The stop near the Hessel home was named “Hessel Station” and proved a boon to the local economy. By 1911 the Press Democrat reported, “Hessel Station on the electric railway, which was only a station when the road opened, has become a town and the town has become a center of the poultry business. A carload of eggs was Friday’s shipment from Hessel.”

One day Esther asked her students, “Where do you go to church?” They told her they didn’t - Hessel had no church and there was no train service on Sundays, so they couldn’t easily travel anywhere. Esther decided to fix the problem by teaching Sunday school at the Eucalyptus School. Her classes were quite popular until someone grumbled about “separation of church and state,” so classes were moved into the Hessel meat market.

Esther herself soon left to pursue missionary work in India. On a trip home she married Roy Meeker, who was also a missionary. Together, they returned to India for a number of years. Both their sons, John and Roy, were born there. Meanwhile, the Hessel Sunday school continued. Eventually, the adults decided to build a real church. One of Andrew Hessel’s sons donated a half-acre of land. Local citizens, who were mostly dairy and chicken ranchers, provided labor and recycled lumber, and nails from an old chicken coop. A modest bell tower was also added.

Esther passed away in the 1970s. The Hessel Church, which grew from her Sunday school, is still going strong at the age of 108 with services, youth programs and a ministry that reaches South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. All because the train didn’t run on Sundays.