His widowed mother Rufina Ellen Tomlinson Slater wanted her children to seek professional careers (like their father Lewis Logan Slater, the lawyer) so my paternal grandfather Harry Allen Slater trained as a pharmacist while he was still living in Kansas, receiving his license in 1908.
[The National Druggist, Volume 38; Publisher: H. R. Strong, 1908.
Original from the University of Michigan. Digitized: Nov 5, 2009]
According to the 1910 U.S. Census, 22-year-old Harry was boarding in the township of Greenfield in Elk County, Kansas, and working as a pharmacist.
[Year: 1910; Census Place: Greenfield, Elk, Kansas; Roll: T624_439; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 0119; FHL microfilm: 1374452. Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006. Original data: Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910 (NARA microfilm publication T624, 1,178 rolls).
Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. ]
We know that Harry played baseball for his employer's team in Kansas. (Unfortunately I haven't been able to decipher what the drugstore's name was.)
[Harry-second row center, Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]
By 1916 Harry moved to Colorado, probably following his Tomlinson relatives, and he was working as a registered pharmacist as noted in the newspaper announcement of his marriage to Anna Delilah Webb (1891-1973) on September 15th of that year.
[Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]
[Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]
But Harry wasn't happy with a job that kept him indoors and he left the pharmacy behind soon after his marriage.* He listed his occupation as a self-employed farmer in Niwot, Colorado, on his June 5, 1917, World War I Draft Registration Card.
[Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Original data: United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls. Imaged from Family History Library microfilm.]
Just as Harry was entering into farm life, a lot of national attention was being given to the advantages of building silos out of concrete. It's clear from the pictures below that Harry was familiar with the silo building techniques shown in this bulletin from the Agricultural Experiment Station of the Colorado Agricultural Station published three years earlier.**
[Silos and Silage in Colorado, H. E. Dvorachek, Agricultural Experiment Station of the Agricultural College of Colorado, 1914.
Source: Google Books. ]
[Harry (right) building a silo 1917. Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]
And that draft registration form is the only time I've found that Harry called himself a farmer. I think he found a contracting business more rewarding than farming.
After his brother Pete returned from serving in the Marines in 1919, they went into business together.
 |
| [Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy] |
[Year: 1920; Census Place: Niwot, Boulder, Colorado; Roll: T625_156; Page: 10A; Enumeration District: 29; Image: 51. Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.
Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls).
Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. ]
[Detail of above]
[Year: 1930; Census Place: Niwot, Boulder, Colorado; Roll: 230; Page: 7B; Enumeration District: 0025; Image: 957.0; FHL microfilm: 2339965. Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.]
[Detail of above]
In the 1940 U.S. Census, Harry and Pete were living on the same street; both were engaged in plastering. From the columns on the far right, we can see that Harry worked 29 weeks during 1939 (and earned $800) while Pete only worked 12 weeks during the same period for $350.***
[Year: 1940; Census Place: Niwot, Boulder, Colorado; Roll: T627_457; Page: 7B; Enumeration District: 7-24. Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. T627, 4,643 rolls.]
[Detail of above]
The Harry and Pete are listed in Polk's Boulder City Directory for 1951.
[Residence date: 1951 Residence place: Boulder, Colorado. Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.]
My grandfather died from stomach cancer on October 8, 1956 at the age of 68 and is buried in Mountain View Memorial Park in Boulder. Apparently some of the walls he built are still standing in Niwot.
*And apparently his mother Fina never forgave his wife Annie for letting him do this.
**Google Books lists a number of other titles on the subject.
***Family stories tell us that Harry also became a stone mason and that he "bossed" a crew of workers in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the Great Depression. (There are several photos and a description of the CCC camp in Boulder here. To read a short history of the CCC in Colorado, look here. (PDF)
© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.
The "S.W. Tomlinson" referred to in the business card was Harry Slater's cousin, Samuel Wayne Tomlinson (b1854), who worked as a stonemason in Boulder, Colorado at least as early as 1896. He probably died about 1928/29, when he stopped appearing in the Boulder city directory.
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