William Baxter (Bill) Slaughter, pioneer rancher, the fifth son of Sarah (Mason) and George Webb Slaughter, was born near the town of Butler, in Freestone County, in 1852. After moving with his family to Palo Pinto County in 1857, Bill grew up with his brothers in the saddle and during the Civil War helped his family furnish beef to the Tonkawa Indians under a contract with the Confederate government. He made his first trail drive with his older brother, C.C. Slaughter, in the fall of 1867, when Col. T.H. Johnson bought the Slaughter cattle to fulfill a contract with a packing plant near Jefferson. In 1869 he accompanied his brother Peter on what was his first trip north over the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas. The following year Bill was placed in charge of a herd of 1800 head under contract to a buyer in Kansas City. The drive went along without incident until the Slaughter men neared the Red Fork of the Arkansas River in the Indian Territory. There two cowboys from the W.B. Grimes outfit warned Slaughter that a band of Osage Indians had stampeded the Grimes herd and would likely do the same to Slaughter's. Undaunted, Bill secured a red silk Mexican serape, two brightly-colored bandannas and extra food from the chuck wagon to use as gifts. With these, plus three steers which the Indians demanded, friendly relations were quickly established. After the herd was safely across the river, Slaughter and two cowboys treated the Osages to horse races for several hours before moving on, reaching Abilene in time to make good on the contract.

Over the next two decades Bill Slaughter made cattle drives almost annually. In 1877 he formed a partnership with his older brother, John B. Slaughter, and with their combined capital of $6,000 bought steers and drove them north to the Kansas markets. About that time he married Anna McAdams from Palo Pinto County. Their son and only child, Coney, was born in 1878. In 1879 the Slaughter brothers moved their cattle to Scallowag (Home) Creek in Crosby County. There they constructed a ranch homestead to which Bill brought his wife and son. After the Espuela Land and Cattle Company obtained title to that property in 1883, the Slaughters moved their herds west to New Mexico. Bill set up his own ranch in the American Valley, in Sierra County, but continued the partnership with his brother until 1886. In May 1887 he was shot and wounded by two rustlers he had earlier indicted as a grand juror, but soon recovered. Slaughter remained in New Mexico until about 1894, making yearly drives to Nebraska and Wyoming. As early as 1889 Slaughter had begun leasing and buying up tracts of land along Coldwater Creek, in Sherman County. By 1895 he had purchased an interest in the Snyder brothers' Coldwater Cattle Company and built a spacious ranch house near the community of Coldwater, the county's first seat. Many of these purchases were paid off by means of a $30,000 loan he obtained from his brother C.C. in Dallas in 1898. Prior to 1896 he was running 10,000 cattle on 150,000 fenced acres. As more settlers came into the area, however, Slaughter reduced his holdings and began cultivating wheat and other cereal grains on 350 acres. A staunch Baptist, he often sponsored tent revivals at his ranch during the summers, with such prominent guest preachers as George W. Truett and James B. Gambrell. In 1901 he conducted his last cattle drive, in the company of his wife, when he trailed a herd from Clifton, Arizona, to Liberal, Kansas, then the southwestern terminus of the Rock Island Railroad. Later that year he drove a herd of domesticated buffalo from Dalhart, in Dallam County, to Fort Garland, Colorado.

In 1900 Slaughter ran for Sherman County judge but lost by four votes to Dudley H. Snyder. However, when Snyder resigned in November 1901, Slaughter was appointed by the commissioners' court to complete the term. Although he did not run in the next election, he was ever after known locally as Judge Slaughter. Slaughter and his son initially opposed moving the county seat to Stratford but afterward organized the town's first bank and operated a dry goods store. Unable to repay $25,000 of his 1898 loan in seven years, Slaughter tried without success to get his brother C.C. to accept a $15,000 payoff. He remained in Sherman County until 1905, when he moved to Dalhart to open a new bank there. His son Coney, by then a likeable young man-about-town, won the envy of his neighbors by becoming the first in Dallam County to own a car, and he owned several at one time or another. After living briefly at Texline, where they established another bank, for a few years, the Slaughters made an auspicious move to Pueblo, Colorado, where Bill was installed as president of its Mercantile National Bank and Coney as cashier. In June 1914 he announced the formation of the Bankers' Trust Company, with a capital stock of $5 million. Set up in association with C.C. Slaughter, it was meant to deal in all aspects of the family's financial empire other than commercial banking.

Bill Slaughter died on March [sic] 28, 1929, and was buried, at his own request, in the old family cemetery at Palo Pinto.
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SLAUGHTER, Judge WILLIAM B.
Judge William B. Slaughter, banker and cattleman residing at Dalhart, in the extreme northwestern county of the Panhandle, is a member of the famous Slaughter family of Texas, and to any one at all acquainted with the civil and political history of Texas and with the state's great cattle industry no introductory mention is necessary to call to mind the prominence of the various members of the Slaughter name in the various departments of Texas life and activity from 'the days of the revolution to the present. Of the present generation, besides the Judge, is his brother, Colonel C. C. Slaughter, of Dallas, one of the most noted of Texas cattlemen, and the great Slaughter ranches in Texas and New Mexico have for years been stocked only with herds of thoroughbred cattle. Another brother, P. E. Slaughter, is a cattleman in Arizona, while another, John B. Slaughter, has his cattle headquarters in Lynn county, Texas.
Born in Freestone county, Texas, in 1852, Judge Slaughter spent his boyhood days in Palo Pinto county and in Dallas. While he was growing up the great industry of Palo Pinto county was cattle-raising, and he has known and been identified with this business from very tender years, thus following the same lines as the other members of the family. When only fifteen years old he was entrusted with the taking of a herd of eighteen hundred cattle from Palo Pinto county to the shipping point at Newton, Kansas, and by cool-headedness and good judgment he stood off a band of Osage Indians who met up with the company while going through Indian Territory, their evident intention being to stampede the cattle. In 1870, at the age of eighteen, he was sent to Chicago to attend Bryant and Stratton's Business College. But after remaining there six days he returned to Texas and began the handling of cattle, buying and shipping on his own account, his operations being carried on mostly in Concho and San Saba counties. He became associated in this business with his brother John B., and this arrangement continued until about 1877. In 1878 he moved to Blanco canyon in Crosby county, where he established a large cattle ranch and remained until 1883, in which year he took his cattle to Socorro county, New Mexico, where he was in the cattle business until 1892. In the latter year he moved his outfit up into Beaver county, Oklahoma, being there about three years, and in 1895 came to Sherman county, in the extreme northern tier of Panhandle counties. Here his ranching operations have been centered ever since. He owns eighteen thousand acres of land, and leases enough more to make his entire pasturage for cattle amount to fifty-one thousand acres, over which princely demesne range his fine herds of graded Herefords, and his stock has always been of acknowledged quality and quantity; keeping up with the reputation always maintained in Slaughter enterprises. On his ranch he has erected one of the fine residences of the Panhandle, at a cost of seven thousand dollars, and its equipments of hot and cold water and all other modern conveniences make it a close rival of the best urban dwellings.
In 1900, as a side line to his other enterprises, Mr. Slaughter went into the mercantile business at Stratford in Sherman county, establishing the Stockmen's Mercantile and Banking Company. After continuing this concern for two years he sold the mercantile department, but retained the banking department, which then became known as the Bank of Stratford, of which Judge Slaughter is president. Its capital stock is fifteen thousand dollars. On March 1, 1904, he extended his financial operations by buying the bank at Dalhart, Dallam county, and converting it into the First National Bank, with a capital of twenty-five thousand dollars, he being president of this institution also. Judge Slaughter now resides in Dalhart, and from this point conducts his various cattle and banking interests.
Judge Slaughter has not been a passive witness of the advance of public affairs, but is a liberal, energetic and progressive citizen of Dalhart, working to build up this new town, and he has manifested a like degree of public spirit wherever he has maintained his residence for any considerable time. He served, by election, as county judge of Sherman county for two years. He is well known in Masonic circles, having attained the Knight Templar degree.
Judge Slaughter was married in May, 1877, to Miss Anna A. McAdams, daughter of Captain McAdams, of Palo Pinto county. They have one son, Coney C. Slaughter, who is cashier of the First National Bank at Dalhart. Mrs. Slaughter is quite prominent in Eastern Star circles, having been most worthy matron of the lodge at Stratford for some time. [A Twentieth Century History & Biographical Record of North & West Texas, Vol. 1, 1906;