Dr. Benjamin Franklin Slaughter
Dr. Benjamin Franklin Slaughter, also known as B.F. Slaughter or B. Frank Slaughter, was a military doctor who was stationed at frontier forts during the early 1870s. Born in 1842, Dr. Slaughter enlisted in the Union army during the Civil War, despite being raised in the South, and remained in the military after the conclusion of the Civil War. He was sent to the Dakota Territory in 1871. Retiring from the military in 1873, Dr. Slaughter, with his wife Linda and their child, moved to Bismarck, ND, where he was a postmaster, socialite, and prominent surgeon. Dr. Slaughter died in 1896 due to complications from paralysis.
Sources
From Early History of North Dakota:
Mr. Linda W Slaughter was the wife of Dr. B. Frank Slaughter, post surgeon of Camp Hancock, and came to Bismarck from Fort Rice in August 1872 with her husband and baby...Dr. Slaughter resigned from the army in November, 1873, to become a citizen of Bismarck...Dr. Slaughter died December 26, 1896, of paralysis.[1]
Iowa State profile of Linda Slaughter:
In 1868...Linda Warfel met Dr. Benjamin Franklin Slaughter, an army surgeon. Dr. Slaughter, although from an established southern family, had joined the Union Army when he finished medical school in Kentucky and stayed in the army following the Civil War. After their marriage, they were ordered first to Fort Rice in 1871 and then in 1872 further up the Missouri River to Camp Hancock, which was to become Bismarck, ND.[2]
North Dakota Place Names:
Wales, ND: This was a rural post office established May 21, 1886 with Dr. Benjamin Franklin Slaughter (1842-1896) as Postmaster, primarily as a means of creating a rural route from Bismarck to the Slaughter post office located farther north, which was officially run by Dr. Slaughter's wife...The proposed name for this facility was Mount Hope, but the Slaughters renamed it for a postal official to compliment his decision to rename the Solitude post office as Slaughter. [3]
From Once Their Home:
Also Dr. B. F. Slaughter, contract doctor and Post Surgeon; who for years after made his home in the vicinity, until failing health took him to his old southern clime.[4]
The State Historical Society of ND had published "Portions of the diary of Dr. B. F. Slaughter, Dakota Territory" in 1978.
References
- ↑ Early History of North Dakota, C.A. Lounsberry, 1919, pg 542
- ↑ http://www.las.iastate.edu/plaza/one_name.php?id=1622
- ↑ http://www.webfamilytree.com/North_Dakota_Place_Names/W/wales_(burleigh_county).htm
- ↑ Once Their Home: Or, Our Legacy from the Dahkotas, Frances Chamberlain Holley, 1890, pg. 164
