doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com They Misspelled his name!

Were any of the Slotterbeks cabinet makers? My great aunt, who lived in San Francisco, had an ornate table with a label that said it was made by a "Slotterbeck" before the turn of the century in California. I saw it many years ago and have never thought about it until I saw this thread. I have no idea where the table is now but it was a dandy.

I think at least some of the Sloterbecks, when they moved west settled in San Francisco. It would not surprise me to learn that one of them made the table, especially if there was lot of carving on it.

Anytime I start digging I find interesting stuff that will send me down a whole new path.

Started last week working on Ned Moran and now were talking about Slotterbek ;-).

One of the few guns to tell me a story was a derringer I restored marked A.J. Plate, San Francisco.
Henry Derringer sued old AJ (and won) because he was copying and spuriously marking derringers "H.Derringer, Phil." on the west coast. As I remember the story, Slotterbek , who had made derringers for Derringer in Phil, moved to SF and went to work for Plate, making... You guessed it, he knew how to make them perfectly, and made some of the finest gun ever made in America. (also can't remember if there are two R's or three in deringer? SpellCheck says three)

And once again Spellcheck is wrong. His name was Deringer with 2 r's. Now I guess it's possible that, over the years while I was going over the hill, the 3-r version has come to mean the generic type of tiny percussion pistol, but the original had 2 r's.
Regards, Joe

The "Slotter" made "derringers" did intentionally misspell his name on their identical pocket pistols, but the courts held it was a blatant attempt to confuse, and awarded treble damages to old Henry. I think I read that this was the first such judgment, and thus has been cited in law schools as part of their teachings on Intellectual Property and Trade Marks.

I believe I read most of the story in Sheldon's "Cal. Gunsmiths"?

That may well be where I read it! I picked up my copy in your shop while you were in Eugene. That goes back a while!

Good memories Terry! That would be more than 20 years ago...

I saw Larry Shelton (correct spelling) at the Missoula gun show a few years back. Bought an antique hand-forged corkscrew from him!
Wonderful book, Cal. Gunsmiths, eh?
I did a story for Man at Arms around that time titled California Percussion Rifles. Larry supplied much of the photography.

George William Slotterbeck was Henry Jr's brother. Their mother was Sophia. Wundhamer bought the shop from the family after Henry Sr. was killed, he had worked for Henry Sr. before that. I have never found a George Walter in the family.

PS - Henry Jr. is "Harry" on his headstone.

Terry, you may well be right about that Lassen Park rifle being "Slotter" rather than Slotterbeck since I never saw it except thru a glass museum case and was probably going by a little card done by some local historian, who might well have been wrong, or him/herself going by a marking partly worn away, or struck at an angle.

I remember looking at that rifle at the end of many shifts and thinking "If I had to rely on a muzzle loader, THAT would be the one." If any ML was ever an "Old Reliable," those big "California" rifles were. There was an "IXL" Bowie there that would have made an excellent backup, too. Brummie's finest. Those old frontier weapons always put me in mind of H.L. Davis' novella "The Kettle of Fire" about NE CA/SE OR in the Indian Wars of the early 1860s.

(Most people never heard of any of this stuff--please DON'T tell anybody about Lassen Volcanic Natl. Park!).