Pioneering Families 2017

The Ferndale Record proudly presents its 7th annual

PIONEERING FAMILIES of Whatcom County

FEATURED FAMILIES

Impero family | Clara Tennant | Adelstein family A supplement of the Ferndale Record July 2017

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2018 Pioneering Families Of Whatcom County Magazine

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- July 2016 A suppleme nt of the Ferndale Record

Contact Brent Lindquist at news@ferndalerecord.com or Calvin Bratt at editor@lyndentribune.com if you’d like to see your family in next year’s Pioneering Families magazine.

Welcome Dear Readers, The Ferndale Record is proud to welcome you to its 2017 Pioneering Families magazine. We are very proud to annually write about and feature some of the families that helped to shape this amazing place we call home……..

Whatcom County!

These pioneering families live amongst you in Acme, Bellingham, Birch Bay, Blaine, Custer, Deming, Everson, Ferndale, Geneva, Glacier, Kendall, Lynden, Maple Falls, Marietta-Alderwood, Nooksack, Peaceful Valley, Point Roberts, Sudden Valley and Sumas. They experienced many hardships and struggles along the way, mixed with great joy and much success. It’s hard to imagine how they accomplished so much with what we today would consider so little. As we celebrate our Old Settlers this month in Ferndale, please take a few moments to read and learn more about some of your neighbors and friends. We hope you enjoy our stories and tribute to these remarkable men and women.

Publisher

Contributing Writer Brent Lindquist Layout & Graphics Myra Gischer Advertising Sales Jan Brown

Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

3

A place to stay in the hills

Two women stand on frozen Silver Lake with their dog during their time as lodgers at the Black Mountain Lodge, operated by Pat and Lena Impero, in 1928. (Courtesy photo/Michael G. Impero)

Michael G. Impero is a historian of the Mount Baker foothills, so it makes sense that his home is chock-full of articles and documents chronicling the history of the area.

One newspaper scan, 4

however, holds a special meaning for Impero.

In the week leading up to the Sunday, July 15, 1928, issue of what was then known as the Seattle Daily Times, a group of Times employees joined

a movie cameraman on a trip to Silver Lake, nestled in the Mount Baker foothills below Black Mountain and just north of Maple Falls.

Their trip was part of what appears to be an ad-

vertisement for Nash Motors, a company that existed from 1916 to 1937. The article and photo captions name-drop the car company a few times.

Story continued on page 6

Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

5

Impero doesn’t know if the party had intended to end up at the Black Mountain Lodge, but the spot obviously made an impression on them. Photos of Silver Lake and the lodge, along with an artist’s rendition of the visitors fishing on the lake in front of a movie camera and a big shot of the Nash 400 sedan, occupy a large portion of the July 15 issue of the Times.

The accompanying story, headlined “‘Pot Luck’ Good ‘Nough At Black Mountain Lodge,” is special to Impero because the manager of the Black Mountain Lodge at that time was Pat Impero, his grandfather, who ran the place with his wife, Lena.

“She was a fabulous cook,” Mike said. “You read how they describe the food in the article.”

Pasquale “Pat” Impero was born in Magisano, Italy, on Dec. 27, 1885, to Rosario and Filomena Impera, the oldest of six children. According to Mike, the family name was changed to “Impero” when Pat traveled to the United States in 1907. He came through Ellis Island on July 21 of that year.

Pat settled in the Pacific Northwest and married Marie Lena Woerner in Bellingham. He worked as a powder monkey for the construction of the Chuck-

6

Boating was a popular activity on Silver Lake back in the day, and the Black Mountain Lodge featured several cabins for lodgers to stay in. (Courtesy photos/Michael G. Impero)

anut Drive highway and at the Chuckanut Sandstone Quarry. Pat and Lena had

three children: George, Lucille and June.

Eventually, they moved to Maple Falls in the Mount Baker foothills to work as the managers of the Black Mountain Lodge on Silver Lake.

Lena ran the lodge, becoming well-known for her homestyle cooking, while her son, George, was a fishing guide on Silver Lake at age 14.

Pat always loved to hunt, and living at Silver Lake and later a few miles

away provided good opportunity for it, Mike said.

He was an avid hunter,” Mike said. “People would come out from all over and stay at the farm, and he would take them hunting. But it became quite common that they would stay at the house and drink and he would go shoot deer for them. He knew where they were.”

Pat and Lena wrote letters back to the East detailing some of the unique amenities available at the

Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

mountain lodge.

“My grandmother wrote back to relatives in Boston, and what they wrote in that letter was, ‘We have running water and electricity,’” Mike said.

In fact, the Black Mountain Lodge had a rather ingenious way of providing fresh running water and electricity to its patrons.

Across the lake, in a gully, there’s a running stream, and up that stream a pipeline was installed to bring the fresh water down the hill. The pipeline ran across the bottom of the lake and up to the lodge.

“To do that, they had to go out in a series of two or three, maybe four boats,

and threaded steel pipe together and lowered it to the bottom of the lake,” Mike said.

The same stream was used to provide electricity to the lodge. A water-pressure penstock was used to power a pelton wheel that spun and generated electricity, like a miniature hydroelectric dam.

“They had power lines nailed to trees around the north end of the lake,” Mike said. “Besides being quite dangerous, I found that to be quite intriguing.”

H.P. Jukes owned the lodge, along with a large shingle mill, at the time.

Jukes hired Pat to help reStory continued on page 10

Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

An avid hunter, Pat Impero often took lodgers on hunting trips. (Courtesy photos/Michael G. Impero)

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9

Pat Impero stands near the water outside the Black Mountain Lodge on Silver Lake.

(Courtesy photos/Michael G. Impero)

move the mill pond to create a farm with a house (previously used as a boarding house for workers at the mill). Pat helped remove the mill pond on the property and created farmland with suitable drainage to Maple Creek.

Pat and Lena moved to the farm after it was completed.

“They moved from the lake down to the farm,” Mike said. “He was a sharecropper, and he lived there for over 30 years. He never owned anything. In Italy, they didn’t own anything, and he didn’t understand that in America you can own things.”

Lena died in 1957 and Pat in 1959. They had eight grandchildren, 14 greatgrandchildren and seven great-great-grandchildren, with his first great-greatgranddaughter born 83 years to the day from when Pat arrived at Ellis Island.

The Black Mountain Lodge eventually became Camp Black Mountain, a Boy Scouts camp, in 1927.

The Boy Scouts of America sold the property in 2012, and as far as Mike knows it’s available for any organization to rent at this point.

“I did pull in there once recently and talked to a fellow. I wasn’t concerned. I was wondering if it was meant to become a Christian camp,” Mike said. “He said any organization that wants to rent it can rent it. I don’t know how well it’s doing. I hope it succeeds. I don’t want to see it divided up and sold as lots.”

Michael Impero grew up in nearby Kendall, and he has fond memories of his grandfather driving to see the family there.

Story continued on page 12

10

Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

Fishing already was a very popular activity on Silver Lake in the days the Black Mountain Lodge operated there in the 1920s. (Courtesy photo/Michael G. Impero)

Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

11

After managing the Black Mountain Lodge, the Imperos moved and became sharecroppers on a farm a few miles away from Silver Lake. (Courtesy photo/Michael G. Impero)

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4

“My grandfather could hardly drive,” Mike said. “He wasn’t a good driver; he was a terrible driver. He’d start out in high gear and then shift to second and back to high. He never understood he had a low gear. He would come down to our house at Kendall every day and honk the horn to give us candy bars and stuff he brought.”

Up at the farm, Maple Creek ran right through the property. Mike fondly remembers fishing that creek often.

“He wouldn’t allow anybody to fish in that creek except for his grandkids,” Mike said.

He also remembers his grandmother’s well-regarded cooking, including her famous spaghetti and soups.

“I was raised up there. It was a wonderful place to grow up as a kid — hunting and fishing and doing all of those things,” Mike said. “There was no turmoil at all. It was just good times.”

The farm property on Silver Lake Road now is owned by Heidi Doornenbal.

7/11/2017July 9:23:072017 AM Pioneering Families of Whatcom County

Silver Lake, as it looks now, remains a picturesque retreat for camping and fishing. (Courtesy photo/Michael G. Impero)

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Crossing cultures

John and Clara Tennant were married in 1859 and together were key figures in early Whatcom County history.

Throughout his lifetime, John Tennant was something of a rennaissance man.

Tennant, who lived near the Ferndale lake that now bears his name, held a variety of different occupations. He was a farmer, mountain climber, interpreter, guide, negotiator, legislator, deputy sheriff, deputy county auditor, lawyer, probate judge, school superintendent; the list goes on.

Many of his accomplishments, however, would not have been possible

14

if not for his marriage to his wife, Clara.

In 1871 Tennant led a Northern Pacific Railroad expedition over the mountains, becoming the first to explore Chimacum Canyon and to raft Lake Chelan. On journeys like these, the travelers would often meet Indians.

“All John had to say all the way through is, ‘I am John Tennant, I am the husband of Clara, daughter of Lummi Chief George Tselouke,’ and he was no longer a stranger,” author Candace Wellman said.

Wellman has spent the past 18 years researching local history, and her new book “Peace Weavers: Uniting the Salish Coast Through Cross-Cultural Marriages,” explores several different instances of pioneer men married to native women.

Through her research, Wellman has discovered that these relationships aren’t quite what the history books often make them out to be. In fact, most literature doesn’t make much of them Story continued on page 16

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Ferndale's Tennant Lake is named after John and Clara Tennant, who made their first home nearby. (File photo) at all, she said, and the reality is that these women were an integral part of not only their husbands’ lives, but of society as well.

Clara was born on the Lummi Peninsula to a Duwamish woman from the White River area near Tacoma and Chief George Tselouke of the Lummi tribe. Clara’s brother, Henry Kwina, would eventually become chief of the Lummi tribe. She spent her early years

learning to care for a family, along with farming practices, childcare, medicine, cooking and basketry.

John was born to a famous Arkansas Methodist preacher and a partQuapaw Indian woman in 1829. He was one of 13 children, and grew up in the Ozarks.

In 1853, after graduating from Cane Hill College in Arkansas having studied surveying and civil engineering, John

left on a cattle drive from his home to a ranch in California owned by a fellow Arkansan.

“He and a bunch of his friends were hired to be the drivers,” Wellman said.

Prior to that cattle drive, John had only ever traveled about 25 miles from home, at most. One of his friends kept a diary, where Wellman found much of her information about the trip.

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Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

John Tennant helped found Orcas Island Community Church, pictured here in 1921. (Courtesy photo/Orcas Island Community Church) friends met many Native Americans. In one such instance recorded in the diary, the group hunted bison with Plains Indians and ate dinner with them.

These kinds of experiences with Native Americans, coupled with his status as part-native himself, made John sensitive to the predominant stereotypes attached to natives at the time.

John eventually moved to California, where he tried his hand at pros-

pecting for gold. He was mostly unsuccessful, however, so he moved north to Washington Territory and put down roots in Sehome on Bellingham Bay in 1856. E.C. Fitzhugh, head of the Sehome coal mine at the time, hired Tennant to work as a clerk and surveyor.

John also worked as an assistant Indian agent, living in a shack on Gooseberry Point. The Lummi tribe was included in the Point Elliott Treaty

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of 1855, settling Indians on reservations. During this time, he met Clara, and they were married in 1859.

John and Clara Tennant had what is referred to as a tribal custom marriage.

Back when Washington was made a territory of the United States in 1853, marriage laws were created that imposed large fines on anyone who performed a traditional, church-based ceremony Story continued on page 18

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between a white person and a Native American. The fine totaled to $500, or about $3,000 in today’s money.

So, to avoid fines like these, some pioneers chose tribal custom marriages. Wellman said she sees a great deal of rewritten or untold history about unions like this.

“Ninety percent of the marriages for the first 20 years of legal Whatcom County were cross-cultural,” she said.

“That has basically been written out of history. All of these marriages at the time were tribal custom marriages done by the ceremonies of the tribes.”

The year before they married, John had taken out a claim on Si’lat’sis Prairie, in the area now known as Tennant Lake. Wellman said John is the only pioneer to not change his land’s name to an English word or term. He used the name Si’lat’sis throughout his life.

John and Clara settled there, and their partnership is evident in the records that Wellman uncovered in her years of research.

While John was working his many occupations, Clara made use of her skills in agriculture and food preservation, selling eggs, feathers and items from her garden as commodities used as far away as Seattle.

“They became very prosperous,” Wellman said.

John had left the Methodist church back in his prospecting days, and Clara had always been Catholic. She brought him back to the Methodist Church, and she converted to Methodism herself, along with their young son, Bayard. Before returning to the church, John had actually held camp meetings in Ferndale and organized a children’s Sunday school.

All the while, John continued his work as a veritable jack-of-all-trades, filling many different roles.

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However, their lives went down a different path when son Bayard died of tuberculosis at age 17 while attending school in Seattle.

“Clara couldn’t bear to be there anymore,” Wellman said.

The husband-and-wife team became missionaries, making their mark on a variety of spots in and around Whatcom County, and beyond. They moved to Lynden, where the couple became friends with town founders Holden and Phoebe Judson.

The Tennants founded churches in Lynden and Ferndale and on Orcas Island. They also developed the Nooksack Indian Mission church and school.

Some of these structures still stand today.

John’s health began to decline in 1887 when he had the first of three strokes while he and Clara were living in Lynden. He died in 1893, leaving everything to Clara, who administered his will.

For the next 10 years, Clara managed the funds and land that she and John had accumulated, as well as serving as a Lummi family elder and a Methodist leader in the community.

Story continued on page 20

One of few existing photos of John Tennant is kept at Orcas Island Community Church. (Courtesy photo/Orcas Island Community Church)

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"Lynden Jim" Seclamatan married Clara Tennant in 1903. She died a few months later. Seclamatan is buried in Nooksack Jobe Cemetery on Northwood Road, John and Clara Tennant in the Lynden Cemetery.

In 1903, in her 60s, Clara married old friend Yelkanum Seclamatan, widely known as “Lynden Jim,” who was the Nooksack tribal chief at the time. They shared some common interests, including the Nooksack Indian Mission and school. Clara died of pneumonia just three months after marrying Seclamatan. She is buried in the Lynden Cemetery alongside John and her two sons.

Clara’s obituary, printed on the front page of the Dec. 3, 1903, edition of the Pacific Pilot newspaper in Lynden, refers to her as “Mrs. Jim Yellowkanam, wife of Indian Jim,”

and does not reveal her first name.

Under the circumstances in which John and Clara lived, marriage was viewed quite differently than it is today.

“Marriages did not involve love,” Wellman said. “Marriages involved, ‘could a woman contribute to the economy and not die?’ Love was irrelevant at that point. But they had a wonderful, long marriage.”

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Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

Above left: The graves of Clara and John Tennant.

Above right: Clara's obituary from The Pacific Pilot. tive women. These wives did not go with their husbands because they did not have a choice, or because they did not know any better. There was an agenda there, with a mutual benefit to both individuals.

“No one ever looks at what the native fathers wanted, only what the white guys wanted,” Wellman said. “People think he was buying a wife, for housekeeping and all that stuff. But in reality, Clara’s father and the other fathers of these high-born girls had their own agenda, which was an alliance with this new power structure, someone to speak for them if necessary, jobs for the bride’s brothers, and it

kept the young woman close to home. Fathers and mothers had their own agenda.”

Therein lies the crux of Wellman’s book. In “Peace Weavers,” she highlights the agency of Clara and other women and the importance of their place in society.

“Peace Weavers: Uniting the Salish Coast Through Cross-Cultural Marriages” is available via a variety of retailers. It is published by Washington State University Press. Candace Wellman will speak on her book’s subject at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 27, at the Village Books store in Lynden, 430 Front St.

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The fact that it has existed in the hands of the same family all that time makes it all the more unique.

Louis Adelstein started Louis Auto Parts back then as a wrecking business, salvaging parts from old and unusable cars. Glass was always part of that salvage operation, and the business found itself specializing more and more in glass as the years went on. By about 1956, the Adelsteins’ business was focused on auto glass, with the transition completed by 1959.

Current president Rick Adelstein took over the business in the 1980s, and today, Rick and his children Carrie (vice president), Lindsey and Ari are integrally involved with the ins and outs of the company.

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OPEN:

Sun - Thurs 11am to 10pm Fri- Sat 11am to 12am CALL FOR TAKEOUT 360-312-8824

dian Bacon, Ita Shrimp, Pepperoni, Cana ef, Prosciutto, co Seasoned Be Ta , la d Onion, co pi Re , Ca ts t ar Ho Artichoke He s, er pp Pe ll Be n Pepper Blend, Mushrooms, live Blend, Italia O , es liv O k ac Jalapeños, Bl a Tomatoes Pineapple, Rom

PM urs 11AM to 10 Open: Sun – Th M A 12 to Fri – Sat 11AM (360) 312-8824 art Lummi Mini M Located Inside 98248 A ay, Ferndale, W 4884 Haxton W

Located inside Lummi Mini Mart 4884 Haxton Way, Ferndale WA 98248 (beside the Silver Reef Casino)

Pioneering Families of Whatcom County July 2017

23

Over 87 Years of Continuous Ownership and Operation by the Adelstein Family. t Suppor pany s com the glas ports your that sup unity. comm

Mel Adelstein Louis Adelstein

Louis Adelstein Sadie Adelstein

Mel Adelstein

Carrie Adelstein

www.louisautoglass.com

Rick Adelstein

Bellingham • 360-734-3840 • 1512 N. State St. Lynden • 360-354-3232 • 407 19th St.