PROLOGUE

TO THE

HISTORY OF THE FAMILY ALTAR

Some parts of this story of this family from Scotland are based on facts. Because of the various times when weeks and months went by without any known records of where they lived or worked, I made an attempt to find out more about this family. I asked many questions from old time residents and relatives of those who had left the eastern states right after the Civil War. I was quite sure that most answers received as to these many questions hadn’t anything to do with the family I was asking about.

During the rime I was asking these many questions I was also starting to have visions and dreams of what could or might have happened during those weeks and months of which there is no know records.

These visions and dreams were repeated so often and each one so nearly identical to the former ones that I subconsciously accepted them as fact. As a result after many years I wasn’t sure what was fact and what wasn’t. even recently I awoke from one of these dreams and it was just as clear and real as the first ones of many years ago; as if I was standing right there where it was happening.

Because I am convinced that most of the story of the "History of the Family Altar" is based on visions and dreams, I cannot with a clear conscience refer to it as anything other than an historical narrative.

Otto Slotemaker

In late November, 1929, having worked most of the year on a large cattle ranch in eastern Oregon and not looking forward to forking hay all day every day to a herd of livestock and not having or feeling a sense of responsibility to anyone other than myself, I quit my job, went to town, got a room in the hotel and planned on taking the stage West early next morning.

That evening I couldn’t relax, feeling restless and uneasy, I went to bed, tossing and rolling most of the night, for there was some unknown and unexplainable inner sense or feeling that seemed to keep telling me not to leave town the next morning. Because I couldn’t figure out the "why" of this feeling I decided to leave town anyway, thereby hoping to outrun this disturbing unknown thing. When morning finally came, I packed my bag, took it down to the dining room with me, but while eating my stack of hot cakes this strange feeling became so strong I didn’t dare ignore it. I told the stage driver who sat near me I’d changed my mind and wouldn’t be traveling with him this morning.

Not knowing what to do or how to proceed trying to find an answer to my troubled mind, I started walking the streets, north and south, then east and west, went in almost every store, through cluttered alleys and behind buildings, stood on street corners and spoke to people I normally wouldn’t; all the time hoping to find some clue that might lead to an answer. By evening I was dead tired. After supper something seemed to tell me to get up and try again. This time I walked a little farther down a street, saw a trail that was perhaps intended to become a street someday and decided to see where this trail went. A cross fence soon stopped me. I stood at this fence several minutes watching the last redness of the setting sun disappear and I became more aware of the clear brightness of the ¾ moon. As I turned around and started back to main street, I took another look at a small, apparently deserted little house set back off the trail. As I stared at this house, a sort of beckoning or swishing movement appeared just beyond the front room window. At this time of year frost usually appears as soon as the sun disappears, so I was convinced no one was in the house. It was dark and no smoke was coming from the chimney, but what was that movement beyond the window? Was it the swish of a cow’s tail? If so, then maybe, she couldn’t get out because the front door was closed. Or was someone hiding in the house? I was both curious and scared. As I hesitated the movement came again, this time more like an arm beckoning. Not knowing who or how many were in the house I approached very slowly and carefully. As I neared the front door, a woman’s voice said, "Come on in. the door is unlocked and I am alone."

Sitting in a rocking chair by the window was a frail old lady. We stared at each other a minute or so and then she asked, "Are you a Christian or have you had a Christian upbringing?" When I said "Yes" she said, "I think, no, I’m positive you are the one I’ve been waiting for and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hang on until you came."

Not knowing what she meant I didn’t say anything. She told me she hadn’t been out of the house for three days, she was too weak to go out. If I would go out and bring in some wood and build a fire in the stove she would then make some tea and we could sit by the stove and have a long conversation.

The only wood I could find were gnarly limbs and some knotty twisted slabs. It took about an hour of steady chopping to fill her wood box. With the first armful of wood I built a fire in the stove. Next, I filled the tea kettle from the hand pump by the kitchen sink and lit the coal oil lamp. When the wood box was full, the front room cozy warm and the tea hot and strong, we had the tea and her last couple of biscuits which were dry as soda crackers and could be eaten only after a good dunking in the hot tea.

As she was pouring our second cup of tea, the old lady started her story, saying that her father and mother were born and raised in Scotland and that she and an older brother were also born in Scotland and a younger brother born several years later in the U.S.

Her father, an ordained minister, was granted his request from his home church for one year’s financing for missionary work in the U.S. After that the churches in the U.S. should pay his salary if he wished to continue as a missionary.

"We finally settled in the hill country of Virginia," she said, "but at a very bad time, for the Civil War had just started. Some of the sons of the hill people joined the Northern army and some the Southern army which caused a lot of friction and animosity among even the closest of neighbors."

The old lady said her father, being a minister and a newcomer, refused to take sides and as a result was shunned and rejected by most of the hill people.

"The war was real bad," she said, "At times troops were seen or heard almost daily. Other times small groups were struggling back from the front lines, some badly hurt in mind and body. Sometimes it was hard to see which uniform they were wearing because of several layers of mud, dust and blood. Mother fed and nursed them regardless of uniform color.

"Early one morning near the end of the war there was a loud commotion at our barn. My brother, who was fourteen at that time, ran out the door with his gun thinking it was that pesky bear again that had bothered out stock before. Just as he went out the door a shot rang out from the barn and my brother dropped dead on the porch. We didn’t dare leave the house, just watched those four men who seemed desperate and very hungry. First they killed and ate several chickens, then our family cow and her calf when the livestock came out of the woods.

"The next morning they harnessed our team of horses to our wagon, loaded the meat they hadn’t eaten, covered it with hay and drove off.

"An hour later father buried my brother.

"Before daylight the next morning we were awakened by the bawling of a calf. Not knowing what this could mean or who might be outside, we stayed in the house ‘till morning light and then saw our team and wagon by the barn. Tied to the back of the wagon was a skinny cow with a hungry calf by her side. This seemingly was an attempt to repay us for some of the loss.

"The following spring, the war being over, we loaded what we could on our wagon and with some chickens, the calf and cow whose owner remained unknown, we headed west. Arriving in Missouri that fall, we met many other families who were eager to leave the war torn area and go farther west.

"The next spring we joined a wagon train going west over the Oregon trail. That fall when the wagon train was passing through a part of eastern Oregon we saw a small settlement in an area where there were many miles of seemingly open grazing land to the south and timbered hills with grassy valleys to the north. Father decided that we should leave the wagon train here and make this our home.

"Before we had a house, father had already started his chosen work, visiting and tending to the needs of the people on the ranches which were scattered over a wide area of this new land. He was not called a missionary; everyone referred to him as the Circuit Rider. To us it was a new, but very appropriate term.

"Father was very enthusiastic and hoped that soon the area would have enough people to support a regular church. In his spare time when the snow was deep, he made a scale model of the front of the church he expected to build in the near future. After he had the scale model finished, he looked it over and decided it should have some functional use other than just something to look at, so with a few small changes it became his writing desk with a place to store his books. He made a door on one side of the steeple, put in a shelf and stored the utensils for the sacraments there.

"We held church services every Sunday in our home even when father was away tending to the needs of the people in outlying areas. Father was more than a minister, he had some medical training and was often called on to help settle disputes in families and among neighbors.

"This scale model church front was the focal point in our house, on Sunday it served as a podium, as father stood along side of it preaching. During the week many people who hadn’t been in or even seen a church for several years would come to our house and just sit quietly in front of it and get some spiritual strength or benefit from being near it.

"Because of the several purposes this church front served, it soon became known as the family altar.

"One year near the middle of December, father decided he should make one more round of the ranches and homesteads before winter set in saying he should be back by Christmas. The weather had been so warm and sunny he didn’t take along an extra blanket or his overcoat. The next week a sudden storm came in from the northwest bringing a lot of snow with strong winds which lasted for several days. A few days after the storm had passed, a rancher brought in father’s horse. It had come to his ranch with his saddle and briddle still on.

"Father wasn’t home for Christmas.

"About two months later a search party found his remains scattered near an overhanging rock ledge.

"Father had apparently taken a short cut over a steep ridge going from one ranch to another and had gotten lost in the snow storm or had had an accident and his horse had wandered away.

"This left mother, little brother and I alone without an income. This second sudden death in our family left mother in a state of shock. I was 17 years old by now and felt it my responsibility to take over.

"I went to a town which is the county seat and was promised a job in the local book and stationary store. We moved to this little house which has been my home ever since. Mother passed away a few years after moving here.

"As little brother started growing up, he lost all interest in home, schooling and church. At age 15 he left me to seek his fortune elsewhere. The last I heard of him he was living on an Indian Reservation."

With our fourth cup of tea this old lady who was now getting tired and sleepy said, "I now come to the main reason for all this long story, which is that I am asking for your solemn promise that you will someday, when you feel capable, make an exact copy of this family altar which my father made and has meant so very much to me and the many people who came to our house just to sit near it for meditation and spiritual strength."

Then the old lady slowly got up from her rocking chair and said, "I have kept this family altar all these years, although it has almost completely fallen apart. It is in my bedroom propped up in a corner." She took me to her bedroom and showed me how all the different parts which were originally put together and the significance of the three entrance steps and the three tiered base of the cross on top the steeple for they represent the three steps of salvation (three marks of a Christian) – faith, hope and charity. She also showed me the unusual design on the entrance doors, which when viewed correctly showed a cross above an opened Bible. "Such a design was not unusual in Scotland a long time ago, for it assured that behind these doors were friends with food, lodging and perhaps a hiding place for those fleeing persecution for their religious beliefs. In making this family altar, father placed a small plaque of hand carved acorns above the entrance doors. He believed that these small early churches could be compared to little seeds for the many churches which would be built as more people moved west to this new state."

After this long story of family history the old lady said she was very tired and would like to get some of the sleep she had missed while waiting for me to come. Would I tell the elderly couple living in a brown house on a certain corner of main street that she would like to see them early the next morning?

That night as I went to bed in the hotel I felt relaxed and at ease. I slept sound all night and the next morning I got on the stage going west and wasn’t bothered by any little voice telling me what I should or shouldn’t do.

Why have I waited these forty years? I always had many ‘reasons’, but actually they were just lame excuses and it was very easy to just keep on postponing my promise. Deep down I’m sure it was because I didn’t feel capable of doing justice to this responsibility. Over a year ago that little inner voice found me again and reminded me of the promise I made in late November 1929. Lately it’s becoming nagging and persistent and again I know I can’t evade it; it keeps repeating "Now is the time, don’t postpone it, it is needed now."

Otto Slotemaker