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Using multiple resources, some modern, some ancient, a consortium of Slotemaker Cousins set out to catalogue and confirm an accounting of Slotemaker Family information gleaned from a variety of sources; word of mouth, Internet archives, diary accounts, shipping manifests, old letters, notes, newspaper articles and recovered memories. The primary area of interest in the current Slotemaker News is Cornelius Slotemaker, son of John and Tillie, married to Sylvia, and father of Arlene, Jack, Ruth, Mel, Ivan and Gerry (aka Mooch). December 8, 1941, a day after Pearl Harbor was attacked, Cornelius was badly injured in a logging accident. It is not known if there is any connection between these two life altering events, both of which live in infamy, however it is known that Cornelius never fully recovered from the logging accident. So far, the Slotemaker Cousins have been unable to determine the details of the accident. Cornelius Slotemaker died on September 19, 1952 after a long battle with Hodgkin's Disease. As his illness worsened, Cornelius's eldest son, Jack, was called home from Army duty in Germany, where he had been stationed shortly after marrying Shirley Wilder on August 6, 1951 (another day which will live in infamy. Almost 5 decades after the death of Cornelius, Grandma Sylvia Nieveen Slotemaker spent her last years at the Christian Rest Home, a place where many of her grandkids remember her from year's prior when she could be found there, baking cookies. While Grandma was a resident of the Christian Rest Home there were also several old cronies of Cornelius living there. And on occasion, while visiting Grandma, one of the cronies would happen into the room and would start to tell a story about Cornelius. Grandma would shoo the story teller away before he could talk. This raised great curiosity as to what it was that Grandma did not want talked about. After much research we believe we now know what it was that Grandma did not want her Grandkids to hear.
As we've already mentioned, Cornelius was a logger. Well, before that he spent a period of time farming in Alberta, Canada. We have, so far, been unable to acquire details of this period, either the dates or the circumstances.
It is well known that Cornelius liked to fish. What is not so well known is that he liked to hunt. Everything from possums to crows to cougars to moose. Taxidermy was one of his hobbies. He began this while still living at home with his mom and dad, much to the dismay of Tillie who did not like the growing collection of stuffed crows and possums. Year's later his prized work of taxidermy was a big moose head which he hung inside the house. Grandma never liked this. But she never had the heart to tell him. But upon his passing the first thing Grandma did when she got home was to get rid of that moose head.
We have as yet unconfirmed reports that some of Cornelius's stuffed animals exist to this day in the Lynden Museum. Cornelius often took off on fishing expeditions. He would load up his old car's running boards with provisions, including (according to the Rest Home cronies whom Grandma did not want to talk) a supply of ice and beer, the quantity of which would determine the length of the fishing trip. When the supply ran out, it was time to go home. Times were very tough, economically, for a period of time from the late 1920s into the 1930s. This was the time of the Great Depression, the time of the Dust Bowl, the time when the winds of war were beginning to blow in Europe and the time when America and many other nations experimented with a policy called Prohibition. An Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which banned the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. This ban generated a wave of organized criminal activity, during which the bootlegger, the "speakeasy", and the gangster became popular institutions. Disillusionment with Prohibition occurred in every country that attempted it. In Canada, the dry laws of 1919 were soon repealed because of economic pressures, not the least of which were the opportunities to sell liquor to citizens of the dry U.S. Which brings us to to the point of all this information about Prohibition. This era offered some rather lucrative opportunities for adventurous risk takers. Particularly risk takers who lived near the Canadian border. And one of those risk takers was none other than Cornelius Slotemaker. Shortly after Cornelius and Sylvia married in 1927 they moved to Ferndale. Cornelius began a produce delivery business, picking up goods at the docks in Vancouver, B.C. and hauling them south. Grandma looked the other way when Cornelius decided to augment his 'produce' delivery service with certain libations which were in high demand, though technically illegal, in the U.S. He would pick up 'produce' in Vancouver and deliver it to Seattle. This was back in the days of Old Highway 99, well before there was an Interstate 5. Highway 99 crossed the border at Blaine and deliveries were made from Blaine on south, through Ferndale, Bellingham, Burlington, Mount Vernon, Stanwood, Marysville, Everett to Seattle. To this day you can still drive sections of Old Highway 99 which our Grandpa, Cornelius Slotemaker, traveled with his load of 'produce'. This information may come as a surprise to those who have experienced the modern day pseudo prohibition-type atmosphere of Lynden. The Kennedy family fortune is thought to have been greatly augmented through bootlegging operations. It is not thought that the Slotemaker family gained a similar fortune from the Cornelius operation. However, to put it in modern lingo---what a cool thing to learn, that one of our ancestors was a bootlegger!
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It has come to the attention of the Slotemaker Cousins that there is some dispute as to the legitimacy of the information revealed here regarding the activities of Cornelius Slotemaker in the 1920s. This controversy is expressed quite clearly in the recently updated history of Cornelius Slotemaker's family where it says, "Persistent rumors of bootlegging activity during prohibition have been consistently denied by friends and family over the years, but the possibility appeals to some who find it within the range of his adventurous personality." The Slotemaker Cousins have acquired evidence which seems to support, somewhat, part of what we have related here...
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It has come to the attention of
the Slotemaker Cousins that there is some dispute as to whether the
controversial taxidermied item which vexed Grandma Slotemaker was
actually a moose head. There is now a counterclaim that it was, in
fact, a deer head. We will stay with the moose head version until
additional deer head confirmation arrives...ironically, and a bit
confusedly, the same person is the source for both versions...
