George Webb Slaughter

A rancher-preacher with a war contract. Slaughter's Handbook entry adds what the plaque skips: during the Civil War he furnished beef to the Tonkawa Indians under contract with the Confederate government. In 1867 he and his son Christopher Columbus drove a herd of steers from Palo Pinto to Shreveport, Louisiana, under contract with T. H. Johnson, and some of his cattle went to James C. Loving and Charles Rivers in 1867 and 1868. By 1860 his range reached into Young County, well past his base near Palo Pinto.

What the plaque says

George Webb Slaughter (May 10, 1811-March 11, 1895) Born in Lawrence County, Miss. Came to Texas with his parents in 1830, settled in Sabine County, and began a freighting business. He participated in the Texas War for Independence, serving as a courier for Gen. Sam Houston, and on one occasion took a dispatch to Col. William B. Travis at the Alamo in San Antonio. Slaughter married Sarah Mason on October 12, 1836, the first marriage sanctioned under laws of the Republic of Texas. The couple had 11 children, including the prominent cattlemen Christopher C. (1837-1919) and John B. Slaughter (1848-1928). George W. Slaughter in 1844 was ordained a Baptist minister. He began raising cattle in Freestone County in 1852, and moved in 1857 to his Palo Pinto County homestead (1/4 miles east). He organized (1861) a Baptist church near his home, and rode a circuit in the area, preaching and practicing "saddlebag" medicine. He and his family survived several Indian attacks. From 1868 to 1875, thousands of his cattle went up the trail to Kansas railheads. Slaughter moved (1870) to Emporia, Kan., but returned here in 1875. In 1882, he founded the First Baptist Church in Mineral Wells. He ceased ranching in 1884. He was moderator (1886) when Slaughter Valley Baptist Church merged with the church in Palo Pinto, where he was later buried. Incise on base: Marker Sponsor: D. C. Harris, grandson

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 15 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — 25 mi
  Graham's 1936 Art Moderne post office, with a New Deal mural by Alexandre Hogue inside, now the free museum of Young County in the town where the Texas cattle raisers first organized.
• Fort Belknap — 33 mi
  The 1851 northern anchor of the first Texas frontier forts, on the Brazos below Newcastle, a Butterfield stop and the post beside the Brazos Reservation until its people were driven out in 1859.

More markers nearby

• Courthouses of Palo Pinto County — 5.1 mi
• Old County Jail — 5.2 mi
• Palo Pinto Cemetery — 5.3 mi
• Palo Pinto County — 5.6 mi