Part four: The End of Forestville and a New Beginning
By 1902 Thomas Meighen was involved full time in politics within the People's Party and was also the president of the First National Bank in Preston. These two jobs kept him away from his old home in Forestville so much that, by 1905, he and his wife Mary Broderick, two sons and one daughter, had moved to a new home in Preston. When he closed the doors of the store for the last time in 1910, Forestville as a town ceased to exist. The only other business in town had closed two years earlier, and Forestville quietly slipped into history. When Meighen died in 1936 at the home of his daughter in Pittsburgh, it appeared his last wish would be left unfulfilled. However, through the unfaultering efforts of several local farmers and Forestville natives, Thomas Meighen finally got his wish of having his boyhood home become a state park in 1963. Today, Historic Forestville is operated by the Minnesota Historical Society and portrays a town set in the year 1899, at the peak of Meighen's political career and his family's farming operation.