Anti-Immigrant Demonizing Takes Me Back To My Family History & Know Nothing MAGATS

My Dutch ancestors arrived in America way back in 1882. Of those who made the float from Holland to America, the only one still here, for me to know, when I arrived, was my Great Grandma Tillie. Great Grandma Tillie's funeral was the first such I remember attending.

Great Grandma Tillie was married to Great Grandpa John. Great Grandpa John died before I was born. My Great Grandparents migrated from Holland with Great Grandpa John's parental units, my Great Great Grandpa Cornelis and Great Great Grandma Aagje.

I may have some names spelled wrong.

Upon arrival in America my ancestors moved to several locations, looking for a place to permanently call home. Including a short stay in Texas. Eventually my Great Grandpa John was sent, solo, via train, to the West Coast, to extreme north Washington, near the border with Canada, because they'd heard there was a Dutch community, called Lynden there.

Great Grandpa John returned from Lynden to tell his family that the area was like Holland, but with big mountains. He brought back a pinecone to give them an idea of how big the trees were. Soon the family made the trek west, farming a large track of land a couple miles east of Lynden.

In the photo you are looking at some of the Slotemaker farm land. That is my niece, Ruby, sitting on my shoulder, under the road sign which is named after us.

That photo was taken in August of 2017. I have not been back to Washington since then.

All the fussing about immigration, illegal aliens, undocumenteds and such, has had me wondering about how my ancestors came to be American.

On August 11, 2001, I was in Washington, at my mom and dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary party.

At that party I was given a box of family photos, and other documents, which I then brought back with me to Texas.

Among those documents were two family histories. One of which you see photo documented on the right.

From these documents I learned, for the first time, how my ancestors came to be in America.

A month after mom and dad's 50th on August 11, a week after I got back to Texas, 9/11 arrived and changed the world we live in.

This somehow made me suddenly have an interest in my family history. I began scanning all the photos I took back to Texas with me.

Soon I became making a Slotemaker Family History website. It soon became huge. 

Then on July 22, 2002, the largest reunion in family history took place, at the Lynden Fairgrounds.

At the top, that is a coffee cup from that reunion, sitting on my laptop, with the Slotemaker website on the screen. (That website is no longer on-line, but still exists)

Yet, with all this family interaction I still do not know the precise means by which my ancestors entered America. Did they have some sort of visa when they left Holland? Where did they enter America? Ellis Island? Were they what we call undocumented aliens nowadays?

This whole anti-immigrant hate speaking totally annoys me. The demonizing is so wrong. And America has a long history of such.

Way back in the first half of the 1850s, before the Civil War, there was a short-lived political party called the American Party. Made up of what the sorts we now call MAGATS.

The better educated Americans of that era took to calling the American Party the Know Nothings. Again, the Know Nothings were what we now call MAGATS.

Like the MAGATS, the Know Nothings demonized immigrants, particularly the Irish and Catholics, whilst being ardent advocates of native-born Protestant dominance.

Sound familiar? 

The most famous Know Nothing MAGAT of the 1850s, the Donald Trump of that era, was Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States...