This is a true story of rags to riches. Christopher Columbus
“Lum” Slaughter claimed to be the first male child born of a marriage
contracted under the new Republic of Texas. He was born on 9 February 1837 to
Sarah (Mason) and George Webb Slaughter in Sabine County. Lum was a ranching pioneer, banker, millionaire,
and philanthropist. Yet at one time, he was so poor he had to ride bareback
because he didn’t own a saddle.
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| Christopher Columbus "Lum" Slaughter |
He was educated at home and at Larissa College in Cherokee
County. As a boy he worked cattle with his father and at age twelve helped
drive the family's ninety-two-head herd to a ranch on the Trinity River in
Freestone County, where the family moved in 1852. Because of his expertise in
herding cattle across the often swollen river, he was regularly employed by
drovers bound for Shreveport with Brazos-country livestock. At age seventeen he
made a trading expedition hauling timber from Anderson County to Dallas County
for sale and processing Collin County wheat into flour for sale in Magnolia,
Anderson County, a trip that yielded him a $520 profit.
With what must have seemed vast wealth to him at that time, he
bought his uncle's interest in the Slaughter herd. Having observed the better
quality of the Brazos stock, he persuaded his father to move farther west. They
selected a site in Palo Pinto County, well positioned to provide beef to Fort
Belknap and the nearby Indian reservations. In 1856, Lum drove 1,500 cattle to
his new ranch.
On 5 December 1861 (possibly 1860), Slaughter married
Cynthia Jowell of Palo Pinto, Texas; they had five children. After being
widowed in 1876, he married Carrie A. Averill (Aberill) in Emporia, Kansas, on
January 17, 1877; they had four children.
When open war with the Indians broke out in 1859, he
volunteered his service and was in the expedition that unexpectedly liberated
Cynthia Ann Parker from a Comanche camp. With the withdrawal of federal
protection during the Civil War, Slaughter continued to fight Indians as a
lieutenant in the Texas Rangers. He also served under Capt. William Peveler in
Young County in the Frontier Regiment, part of the effort to maintain frontier
protection during the war.
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Nadua and Topsannah, 1861
Cynthia Ann Parker and Prairie Flower |
When the Confederacy fell and Indian harassment continued,
Slaughter and other ranchers started for Mexico in search of new ranchland.
During the expedition Slaughter suffered an accidental gunshot wound that
incapacitated him for a year, causing a nearly ruinous decline in his cattle business.
After his recovery he started a cattle drive to New Orleans in late 1867, but
en route contracted with a buyer for a Jefferson packing business to sell his
300 steers there for thirty-five dollars a head in gold, a large sum. At some
time during this period, people began referring to him as Colonel Slaughter.
With his new stake he began regular drives to Kansas City
in 1868, selling his herds for as much as forty-two dollars a head. He sold his
Texas ranching interests in 1871 and in 1873 organized C. C. Slaughter and
Company, a cattle-breeding venture, which later pioneered the replacement of
the poor-bred longhorn with Kentucky-bred blooded shorthorn stock. By 1882 a
herd shipped to St. Louis received seven dollars per hundred pounds, several
times what he could have made selling in Kansas. His income increased until it
reached $100,000 per year, at which time he began giving away money to
charitable purposes, donating from 10 to 25 per cent of his income to
philanthropy each year.
In 1873, Colonel Slaughter moved his family to Dallas and a
few years later dissolved his partnership with his father. About 1877 he
established one of the largest ranches in West Texas, the Long S, on the
headwaters of the Colorado River and there grazed his cattle on the public
domain. Desirous of becoming a gentleman breeder, Lum purchased the Goodnight
Hereford herd in 1897 and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair grand champion bull,
Ancient Briton. In 1899 he acquired the famous Hereford bull Sir Bredwell for a
record $5,000.
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| C.C. Slaughter home, Dallas |
Through these purchases Slaughter's purebred Hereford herd
became one of the finest in the business. Around 1898 Slaughter undertook a
major land purchase in Cochran and Hockley counties. He bought 246,699 acres,
leased more, and established the Lazy S Ranch, which he stocked with his
Hereford herd and mixed breed cattle from the Long S and consigned to the
management of his eldest son.
In 1877, Slaughter helped organize the Northwest Texas
Cattle Raisers' Association (later the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers
Association), for which he also served a term as president in 1885. He was the
first president of the National Beef Producers and Butchers Association in 1888,
an organization formed to combat market domination by the meat-packing
industry.
Frequently titled the "Cattle King of Texas,"
Slaughter became one of the country's largest individual owners of cattle and
land. By 1906, he owned over a million acres and 40,000 cattle and was the
largest individual taxpayer in Texas for years. For a time "Slaughter
Country" extended from a few miles north of Big Spring for 200 miles to
the New Mexico border west of Lubbock. By 1908–09, however, he opened his
Running Water and Long S Ranches to colonization and sale.
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| Hereford cattle |
Failure of the land company promoting colonization caused
much of the land to revert to his ownership by 1911. Under the management of
Jack Alley, it was restored to profitability by 1915. Slaughter maintained
strict control over his operations until 1910, when he suffered a broken hip
that crippled him for the remainder of his life, compounding problems caused by
his failing eyesight. He consequently turned the business over to his eldest
son, George.
In addition to ranching, Slaughter participated in banking
in Dallas where he helped organize City Bank in 1873 and invested in the bank's
reorganization as City National Bank in 1881. At that time he became its vice
president. In 1884 he helped establish the American National Bank, which
evolved by 1905 into the American Exchange National Bank (later First National
Bank). He was vice president from its organization until his death.
Slaughter was a Democrat and Baptist who contributed
two-thirds of the cost for the construction of the First Baptist Church in
Dallas and served as vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, as
president of the state Mission Board from 1897–1903, and as an executive board
member of the Baptist General Convention of Texas from 1898–1911. His support
of a plan to retire the consolidated debt of seven Texas Baptist schools and
coordinate their activities into a system capped by Baylor University assured
its acceptance by the general convention in 1897.
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C. C. Slaughter breaking ground for what
would become Baylor Hospital in Dallas |
Slaughter also contributed generously to the establishment
of the Texas Baptist Memorial Sanitarium, which later became Baylor Hospital in
Dallas. This is especially interesting to me, as both our daughters were born
at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. He also contributed to the medical school and to
the Nurses Home and Training School.
Colonel Slaughter often summed up his philanthropic
philosophy saying, "I have prayed the Master to endow me with a hand to
get and a heart to give."
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| Slaughter established this Free Clinic for Minorities |
He died at his home in Dallas on 25 January 1919. However,
his death precipitated a tangled family financial scandal. Less than a week
after his death, his younger brother Bill, with whom he had had a long and
strained financial relationship but who managed the Long S, was accused of
fraud. Bill had attempted to sell his nephew Bob Slaughter’s new Western S
Ranch on the Rio Grande in Hudspeth County to an unknown company from Mexico.
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| C, C. Slaughter grave, Greenwood Cemetery, Dallas, Texas |
Learning of the fraudulent negotiations and backed by his brothers, Bob
confronted and fired his uncle. Although Bill Slaughter later filed a $3
million slander suit against his nephews, he apparently never collected
anything from it. Colonel Slaughter’s family continued to give to causes close
to the heart of C.C. Slaughter, and Baylor Hospital became one of many
testaments to his generosity.
