History Hotdish Episode 38 - The Slaughter Family

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to History Hot Dish, a casual conversation about the
historic people and events that give Bismarket's unique flavor. History
Hot Dish is brought to you by the Bismarck Historical Society,
a local nonprofit whose mission is to learn, preserve, and
promote the history of Bismarck. Sit back, turn up the
volume and enjoy another helping of History Hot Dish.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to another episode of History Hot Dish. I'm your
host Kate Waldera, a member of the Bismarck Historical Society's
Board of Directors. Today's episode is a special version of
History Hot Dish where we feature another important project of
the Bismarck Historical Society, the Prairie Pioneers Early Families of

(00:44):
Bismarck Programs. The Prairie Pioneers Project is a video collection
of twenty interviews with current family members from some of
Bismarck's early and influential families and residents. The Prairie Pioneer's
Early Family Only's a Bismarck project was funded through a
donation by Chad and Stacy Walker of Bismarck, a Cultural

(01:07):
Heritage grant through the State Historical Society of North Dakota
and donations from local history enthusiasts. The project was done
in collaboration with Matt Fern and his team at the
Creative Treatment. Matt is joining me today in the studio
to help bring you another tasty helping of history hot dish,

(01:29):
and of course, another wonderful partner in this project has
been the Dakota Media Access, where you can find each
of The Prairie Pioneer's original ten episodes, along with ten
new families and their stories of Bismarck that began airing
on Community Access in December. Matt, thank you for joining

(01:49):
me today to share some of your work with our audience.
For your listeners, please take a moment to introduce yourself
from the role that you played in this wonderful collection
of interviews and videos.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Thanks for having me, Kate. I'm Matt Fern. I'm born
and raised here in Bismarck. It's my favorite city in
the whole world, and I've been running the Creative Treatment
for about fifteen years here in Bismarck. We do a
lot of ads across the state and across the country,
as well as podcasts and documentaries. My main my main

(02:24):
passion has always been telling the stories of North Dakota.
I did a docuseries called Daily to Codin that kind
of started out my whole my whole filmmaking career, and
so when the opportunity to do Prey Pioneers came up,
I jumped on it. A lot of these names Walked
or Woodman, See, they have been around, you know, the

(02:46):
Bismarck community, my whole life, and so to put a
face to the name, to humanize and to actually hear
the story behind those names was really exciting, and so
I'm very grateful to be part of the project. And
it wasn't just me. I have a great team working
with me as well as the Bismarck Historical Society and
Dakota Media Access. But this has been just a really

(03:09):
awesome project where the Bismarck community has come together and
some of the histories.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Of these families have just been very unique, very interesting,
and as always, everyone learns a lot of about the
families and their important part that they played. Today's episode
of History Hot Dish will focus on one of the
earliest families to settle in Bismarck, the Benjamin and Linda

(03:37):
Slaughter family. We will hear stories from Slaughter family descendants
Stacy Langmol, Jenny Eastman, Dulham, and Kurt Headstrom about a
Civil War surgeon who became Bismarck's first postmaster and his wife, Linda,
who became the first public school teacher in Bismarck, as
well as a successful attorney and a published office her

(04:02):
what highlights or is this another episode that was hard
to edit?

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, this is hard to edit. This one though, I
feel like is the most that needs to be a
movie that I had not known the Slaughter family or
Linda Slaughter before starting this project, and it blew my mind.
The list of first behind Linda Slaughter is NonStop. First postmaster, general,
first teacher, first, so many things. And you know, one

(04:31):
of my favorite memories is a story that I believe
Stacey tells of Linda standing up to General Custer at
the time and.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Her she did, if I remember from the episode, she
didn't have a very high opinion of.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
Customers, right, and just an incredible person and a direct
descendant of Governor Bergham as well as part of the
family of the Slaughter family. But this is another example
of why this so I think important to.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
The Bismarck community, because this is really important story to
tell and very inspiring and needs to be made a
movie as soon as possible.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Especially Linda Slaughter. You know, in the time frame that
she lived, she was she was out there, you know,
like you said, she had so many firsts, you know,
first teacher, first postmaster or one of the first female postmaster.
I'm thinking, and she would have been someone I would
have loved to have met. She would have been amazing.

(05:35):
And I find it interesting, you know, for a woman
in that time frame when it was definitely a man's world,
she stood out. You know, she was head and shoulders
above a lot of people of either gender in those days.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, you can definitely sense the courage, no fear by
her decisions. And I always think of just the image
we got from the family of her riding downtown Bismarck
on a horse and a nice beautiful dress, and yeah,
I think that image kind of stands out. But yeah,
very very important episode, and I hope people learn a lot,

(06:10):
and I hope moving forward people talk more about Linda
Slaughter and her impact here in North Dakota.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Well, I know we have done with Anne Badney, we
had done an episode with about Linda Slaughter and one
of the things she was so well thought of by
the soldiers at the fort and they were I think
they were at Fort Rice and they lost a child
and Linda was very concerned.

Speaker 5 (06:34):
You know.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
It was in the winter that this sad incident happened,
and she was just beside herself wondering how they were
going to, you know, take care of everything. And the
soldiers somehow managed to get a grave Doug for her
little son, and that meant the world to her because

(06:57):
it took them a long time to do it. The
ground was frozen. I think they rigged some kind of
a tent with heat to thaw the ground so that
they could do this for her. And that's how well
thought of that she was, you know. So she was
an extraordinary person on all levels.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, I agree, and.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
With that, we are going to tell the story of
the Benjamin and Linda Slaughter family.

Speaker 6 (07:19):
There was a thing, a book that Douglas Armstrong wrote
years ago about Custer's last stand, and Hallmark made a
television show out of it, and Linda Slaughter was portrayed
as having an affair with Custer. I remember asking my
grandmother Lenny hadstrung what Linda Slaughter thought about Custer, and

(07:45):
her exact words were, she thought he was crude, rude,
and rude.

Speaker 7 (08:32):
Benjamin and Linda Slaughter arrived in Bismarck in eighteen seventy
two after being a surgeon in the Civil War and
at Fort Rice. Benjamin Slaughter was a surgeon at Camp Hancock,
then owned a private physicians practice in Bismarck. He was
also the city's first postmaster, as well as a member

(08:52):
of the first Bismarck City Council. His wife, Linda, was
also a postmaster and started the first school in bus
and was the first public school teacher in the city.
She was also the state vice president of the National
Women's Suffrage Association and started the Ladies Historical Society in
eighteen seventy five. She later became a lawyer and a

(09:16):
well known writer who wrote the words of North Dakota's
state song in nineteen two.

Speaker 5 (09:25):
Benjamin Slaughter grew up in Kentucky and he went to
school there, graduated from the medical school, and then he
joined the Union. He was then appointed a full surgeon
with the rank of major on his twenty fourth birthday.
He was the youngest surgeon in the army at that time.

(09:48):
In eighteen sixty five, the Kentucky Volunteers, the fifty fifth
Kentucky Volunteers, were ordered to head off Morgan's command. In
the pouring rain, Doctor Slaughter's horse slipped and fell on
his ankle, and that cost him pain for the rest
of his life. After the war, he taught at medical

(10:10):
school and decided to start up his own private practice.
He decided he liked the military life better, so he
joined the army again, this time the seventeenth Infantry and
served the South during the reconstruction period. And it was
here in Tennessee that he met Linda Slaughter and got

(10:35):
to know her, and he decided he would like to
marry her. She was thinking about doing missionary work in India,
and he had a little bit of a time trying
to talk her out of doing that and marrying him,
but he finally succeeded, so they were married in eighteen
sixty eight in Cadiz, Ohio, where she came from. Linda's

(10:59):
father was General Charles Warfell, and he was a veteran
of the Mexican American War. Later, he was a Brigado
general during the Civil War in charge of soldiers who
intercepted Morgan's wrighte In Harrison County, he purchased a mill
and it prospered. He then added a blacksmith shop and

(11:21):
a general store. The area became known as Warfell. It's
two miles east of Cadiz, Ohio, near cat Is. A
post office was actually named after the Warfel family. Also,
Charles Warfell was an Ohio senator for two terms. He
was an abolitionist and believed everyone deserved an education. He

(11:45):
was a leader of the Presbyterian Church. Linda's mother, Mary
was a distinguished prominent person of the Boyd family.

Speaker 6 (11:54):
She had a sister, Rosalind, and she's kind of a mystery.
I believe Rosalind I was hard of hearing her dad,
and she married a guy and that didn't work out.
And then she married another guy, and right before he
was hunting with doctor Slaughter and accidentally shot his hand off.

(12:17):
And so but anyway, Rose, when I had was the marriage,
he gave her an opportunity to leave, and so she
went ahead with it, and then she did end up
dying at the State hospital, but I believe she worked there.
I'm not sure though, what the history of that is,
and she is buried at the State Hospital.

Speaker 8 (12:40):
Benjamin he was a surgeon when the Union Army in Kentucky,
and then he was his station was moved to fort Rice,
and they come up on a paddle wheel and to
fort Rice, and he was a post surgeon fort Rice.
He went out with the patrols to help survey the

(13:04):
Northern Pacific Railroad and military mail roads.

Speaker 5 (13:08):
Fort Rice is located forty miles south of Bismarck. It
was a drastic change from the civilization that they were
both used to. They spent two years here while they
waited for the railroad to be built. Life was lived
inside a walled fort and very dangerous. If anybody would
want to leave, they would usually have to be accompanied.

(13:32):
They couldn't leave themselves for fear of the hostile Indians
that were right outside the perimeter. Doctor Slaughter was kept
busy with men wounded by bullets or arrows, injured by horses,
men frozen deficiency diseases, and others who were homesick, nerve shattered,

(13:53):
men who pretended to have symptoms so that they wouldn't
have to stay at the fort.

Speaker 8 (13:58):
When they were at Fort Rice, Linda helped the doctor
with the natives that were camped outside of the fort,
and she would go and help them, and they give
her the nicknames Zula or one that helps. And this
is also where they lost their maybe Frank, who was

(14:19):
born in December, mid December and died on December thirtieth.

Speaker 5 (14:25):
They were going to have to wait until the spring
when the ground thought to get him buried, but the
family had a hard time accepting that. So the general
decided to start a fire and had his soldiers dig deep.
They put the coffin in and then piled dirt on top,

(14:48):
poured water on it so that the ice would cause
protect a barrier so that the wolves could not bury
or could not dig up the baby. Then that was
buried there.

Speaker 8 (15:00):
The ground was frozed and they had to the soldiers
went out use picks to get the grave and stuff,
and while they were doing that they were attacked by
the Indians.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
A reminder for our guests that have just joined us,
you're listening to a special serving of History Hot Dish
on Radio Access one oh two point five FM. I'm
your host Kate Waldera and today Matt Fern with the
Creative Treatment has joined me in the Studio to discuss
the Bismarck Historical Society's Prairie Pioneer programs that Matt and

(15:38):
his team helped create. Each episode has been adapted as
an audio broadcast to help the Bismarck Historical Society fulfill
its mission to learn, preserve, and promote Bismarck's rich history.

Speaker 5 (15:54):
One incident that was very terrifying at the fort was
that Indians started a fire and a woodpile alongside a wall,
and the fire started very quickly and spread, and the
officers were busy putting that out. Some of the Indians
were getting closer to coming in. The wives were very

(16:14):
scared and they all gathered together and grabbed their children
and were running towards the river. The soldier shot off
a cannon and that scared the Indians away, so they
were safe, and in eighteen seventy two he was ordered
to the new post of Camp. Hancock served as post

(16:35):
surgeon until November eighteen seventy three, then resigned to become
a citizen of Bismarck.

Speaker 8 (16:43):
Yeah he resigned his commission and become a private practice
in Bismarck. He was in the first city council in Bismarck,
which was in eighteen seventy five, he actually was started.
It was the first postmaster too. At that time Linda
was not legally able to be the postmaster. She actually

(17:05):
did the work, but she was not legally being able
to be a postmaster.

Speaker 5 (17:12):
Linda she was a writer. Her first book was a
book of poems called Early Efforts. Then she wrote a
couple of books about slavery and teaching the freed slaves
and this was called Freedman of the South and Summering
in the South. She also wrote a book called the
Amazonian Core, and this was about the military life and

(17:36):
being a wife of a soldier. She wrote about Fortress
to a Farm and this was a book about Bismarck's beginnings.
This book is Linda Slaughter's first accounts of Bismarck. Starting
in eighteen seventy two, she understood the importance of collecting

(17:57):
and preserving early Bismarck history so that future generations could
learn from it, from its humble beginnings to the growth
that developed when the trains came. She also describes a
different forts in North Dakota and their importance and how
mail was delivered throughout the state. Also the New Northwest,

(18:21):
which was a pamphlet describing the beautiful area of Bismarck
with all the possibilities of land, and a couple of
copies of this was placed in the cornerstone of the
courthouse and the cornerstone of the Capitol building. Linda Slaughter
spent several winters in Washington, d C. And she was

(18:43):
Washington correspondent for the Bismarck Tribune.

Speaker 6 (18:46):
Victoria wood Hall, I don't know if you remember her.
She was the suffragette, kind of an interesting lady, and
I think kind of eccentric, and she was going to
run for president, and I mean, in those days, Alice,
I'm sure, really unheard of. And she had three people
on the short list to be her vice president, and
one of the three was Linda's Slaughter, but she didn't win.

(19:10):
The other two one was from New York and California,
and Solos one of the other ones that ran with us.
But she was, you know, close.

Speaker 5 (19:20):
The news paper articles attracted attention of the Northern Pacific
Railroad and the commissioned her to write newspaper articles for
Saint Paul, Chicago, and New York. Linda served as vice
president of the Women's National Press Association. She was also
a teacher. She taught school in Harrison and Jefferson Counties

(19:44):
in Ohio before coming to North Dakota, but she also
taught the newly freed slaves in Kentucky and Tennessee. She
helped with the schools down there and also with the churches.
She later came the first teacher in Bismarck and the
superintendent of schools in Burley County. She organized the first

(20:07):
Sunday school. She was a nurse. She would go and
help her husband with the patients. She was also an artist.
She loved to sketch and draw, and she even taught
some art classes.

Speaker 8 (20:19):
And she also became a lawyer. Later on in life.

Speaker 7 (20:24):
Helped tell the stories of Bismarck's past and become a
financial sponsor of this program. Contact info at Bismarckistory dot
org to learn more.

Speaker 5 (20:38):
One story I love is that General Grant was present
for the laying of the capital cornerstone, and Linda Slaughter
urged her girls to take a look at the man
with the gray hair and beard and to remember that
they had seen General Grant.

Speaker 6 (20:55):
I remember asking my grandmother, Lennie Headstrong, what Linda Slaughter
thought about Custer, and her exact words were, she thought
he was crude, rude, and rude. She did not like
Custer at all.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
Linda was a postmistress and she got the mail bags.
They were had a lock on them, and it was
she was the person in charge of making sure this
mail was distributed correctly. General Custer at Fort Lincoln decided
that he should be able to see those bags first,

(21:38):
and she said, no, you cannot do that, that's my job.
But he continued to take the bags and wreck them,
wounded them to open him so he could distribute to
his area first, and so she wrote a letter. Linda
Slaughter wrote a letter to Washington describing what was going on,
and they said, you are in charge of the bank,

(22:00):
so you are the one to distribute this male. So
General Custer had to take a step back, and he
learned real quick that Linda was in charge of that.

Speaker 6 (22:12):
There was a thing a book that Douglas Armstrong wrote
years ago about Cust's last stand, and Hallmark made a
television show out of it, and Linda Slaughter was portrayed
as having an affair with Custer. I mean, you know,
so my mother like really say another word. Really got

(22:33):
mad and they started a correspondence and he was saying
like sort of like, well it wasn't poetic exactly what's
really poetic license And my mother said, this is totally
opposite of what you feel. And so they kind of
went round and round about that for a while.

Speaker 5 (22:53):
She started the Lady's Historical Society in eighteen seventy five
and was its president, and then it did merge with
the State Historical Society in eighteen eighty nine. She was
a women's suffragist, a lawyer, the first woman voter for
a presidential candidate in a national convention, and she wrote music. Also.

Speaker 6 (23:20):
She had some kind of paralysis. I noticed it started.
She died in nineteen eleven, and I noticed it started
several years before, and I'm not sure. Something must have
been neurological or a stroke. And she went to Saint
Cloud and the nuns, you know, took care of her there,
and then she's buried in Saint Cloud, and doctor Slaughter

(23:45):
is buried in Bismarck.

Speaker 5 (23:55):
I first learned about it through my dad, and then
when I was going to school, I was in the
fourth grade and my teacher at Northridge, missus Jones was
talking about Linda Slaughter and I mentioned I was a relative.
She got all excited, so I went her the book
to read Fortress to a Farm, and she wrote me

(24:16):
a thank you note, which I still have to this day.

Speaker 6 (24:19):
We grew up with childhood stories, you know about them
from surrounding family. But also there'd be events like somebody
be doing minda slaughter chitad event or something, and I'd
learned from those too. And then also my other thing
was well just even museums and historical societies, So I mean,

(24:42):
there are really different, varied places you know, to hear
about things. The great grandmother Lenny did she tell you
some stories?

Speaker 8 (24:53):
Lenny did. Yes. We would go up to see her
in Fall and she lived in a top Florida Patterson
and she would take me and my sister Nancy to
the window and show us where Buddy Forth was and
she'd point out, well, that's where so and so's building was,
and that's where this business was, and yeah, and she

(25:14):
was I mean because she wrote for Bismark to be also.

Speaker 6 (25:27):
Well, there was sort of a group of three and
then big deal with them was they all look up
on and who got a new convertible usually every year.
So one of those was Harley McDonald, the Big Boy,
so that was always a big bird on the street.
And he had a new Cadillac in the year out
to see what colored it was. And then Harold Shaffer

(25:49):
had a pink Cadillac convertible, and I remember my dad
before he got it, ever, he said to me, well,
when you get married, you thought this was a big
job by the of pink Callac convertible, never thinking, you know,
that would ever happen. So one day he's walking down
Forest Street and all who should flash by in a
pink Calac convertible but Harold, And it's kind of interesting.

(26:15):
Years later I was talking to Harold and he said
he actually they actually made special paint for its convertible,
so it's the exact same shade as the glass wax can.
So that's kind of an interesting piece of trivia. And
then the other convertible, although I don't know if he
drove it every year, was Floyd Boutris on Houston drive

(26:36):
around in this big, flashy white Lincoln, and we'd all
be an of course, because I was there of Elvis
Presley movies and Elvis as you know, driving around and
it's white convertible with red interior. So that's the story
of that. And of course Harold was a lot of
philanthropy and just like well, everybody knows his story. And

(26:59):
he used to have a little office kind of over
I think it was a Scott's Time store on Forest Street,
because I think it was there a while, because it
wasn't until later they built a building. But I remember
I went in there one time with my dad and
he had a picture in Joe Stafford, the singer, on
his wall, and I was just I was just amaw.
You know, it was autographed to Harold because he had

(27:20):
sponsored she had the Joe Stafford Show and she, you know,
was the star of the show and he sponsored the ads.
And there were glasshax Old seals. Try it yourself.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
And if you don't agree that glass watch is the
finest way to clean windows you've ever seen, right to me,
Harold Shafer, Bismarck, North Dakota.

Speaker 6 (27:44):
There was three different presidents that came to Bismarck that
I saw. One when I was about I think maybe four,
Poorish was Eisenhower, and I remember he was in a
green convertible and so on and then Jimmy Carter landed
for a campaign stop on them as dad and then LBJ.

(28:08):
This is really crazy. I didn't know who he was.
I think he was just a senator at the time
when he was at the old airport and it's a
really crowded space. And I came with Sarah Blaylock. His
dad was ancha in the Democratic Party. We were just
hanging out behind the gate. Well, who should walk up
and talk to us? But Ladybird she was bored and

(28:28):
I think she had I know she had two girls
of bebut our age. So that's my brush with greatness.

Speaker 5 (28:35):
I am proud of the fact that all of Linda
Slaughter's daughters went on to teach, following in their mother's footsteps.
I'm thankful that Jesse ofmine gathered information that she found
about her parents in North Dakota and put together the
book Zuzzula so we could learn more about North Dakota history.

(28:56):
And I am proud of the fact that Linda Slaughter's
great brand son, Doug Burgham, is the governor of the state. Now.

Speaker 6 (29:04):
Well, I think they were good people and tried to
contribute to the community. They're very community minded, so I
think that was important, and just their experiences of what
they went through, you know, would maybe inspire other people
to do certain things or be an inspiration.

Speaker 8 (29:27):
Just being part of helping the community and you know,
Burley County grow. I mean, it was all these pioneers
together work together to do this, you know, and it's
just nice to be a part of that.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Matt, thank you again for joining me today. Please tell
our audience where they can find the video versions of
each of the Prayer Pioneer programs.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah, everyone can. The best place to go is going
to be Bismarkhistory dot org, the Bismark Historical Society's website.
There you'll have a link to the YouTube page which
is Bismarck Historical Society, and there you can watch all
the past episodes of Prey Pioneers, as well as other
programs produced by the Bismarck Historical Society.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Thank you for listening to History Hot Dish if you
like what you heard. The Bismark Historical Society hosts programs
and events throughout the year. We welcome all those with
an interest in local history to join us. For more
information about programs or membership, visit our website Bismarkhistory dot
org or find us on Facebook. You can find History
Hot Dish on one o two point five FM, Radioaccess

(30:45):
dot org, and anywhere you find great podcasts. History hot
Dish is produced by the Bismark Historical Society in partnership
with Dakota Media Access