| Alonzo was born
on the 4th of July 1838 in Plum Grove, Marion
Co., Missouri. A teacher and law student, Alonzo
was admitted to the Missouri bar in 1857 and
became law partner with Joseph P. Grubb in St.
Joseph. He married his childhood sweetheart,
Alice Amelia Waddell, the daughter of William
Bradford Waddell, and started a new practice in
Lexington, Missouri. At the start of the Civil War he
joined the Confederated forces and as colonel, he
commanded a regiment known as the "Slayback
Lancers" which was attached to Shelby's old
brigade, and remained in that capacity until the
close of the war. He was a writer and orator, and
well-known in St. Louis where he set up a law
practice.
In 1878 James O.
Broadhead became his law partner, and four years
later Broadhead became a Democratic candidate for
Congress. An on-going feud with John Cockerill,
the editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
escalated when the paper ran articles which
assaulted Broadhead's character. Demanding an
apology, Slayback along with his friend and
attorney William Clopton, went to Cockerill's
office. Cockerill pulled out a revolver and shot
Alonzo in the heart, and despite Clopton's
insistence that Alonzo was not armed, the jury
returned with a verdict claiming justifiable
homicide had been committed in self-defense. In
1920 the truth of Slayback's murder came to light
when an ex-employee of the Post-Dispatch
explained that a pistol had been planted on
Slayback so that Cockerill would be able to plead
self-defense.
A large number of
St. Louisans considered the verdict unjust and
turned out in record number for Alonzo's funeral.
He was first interred at Bellefontaine Cemetery
in St. Louis, and later his remains were moved to
Lexington, the city of his childhood home where
we was laid to rest in Machpelah Cemetery beside
his father. Those left to mourn his tragic death
were his mother Anna, wife Alice, his children
(Susie, Minnette, Katie, Mable, Grace, and
Alonzo), brothers Charles E. Slayback of St.
Louis, and Preston Trabue Slayback of Denver
City, and sister Minnie Bond, wife of Dr. Y. H.
Bond, of St. Louis.
|
| Born in
Lexington, Lafayette Co., Missouri on 24 Jan
1839, she married Alonzo W. Slayback on 14 Apr
1859. They were the parents of Suzanne, Minnette,
Katherine, Mabel, Juliet Grace, and Alonzo. As
noted above, Alice's husband was murdered by John
A. Cockerill, editor of the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch in 1882. After the death of her husband,
Alice resided with her married daughter Katherine
Wolfe in St. Louis. Alice died in Maplewood, St.
Louis Co., Missouri on 26 Dec 1920 and was laid
to rest in the Machpelah Cemetery near her
husband and father.
|
| William was born
in Virginia on 07 Oct 1807 and was the son of
William Waddell and Catherine Bradford. He was
four years old when his mother died, and after
her death, lived with his mother's sister Lucy
for four years. When he was eight, he removed to
Kentucky with his father who had then married
Sarah Crow. He
left home at the age of seventeen to work the
lead mines in Illinois. He then went to St. Louis
where he clerked for Berthoul & McCreery Dry
Goods Company, and then for Henry Shaw in a
hardware store. He married Susan Byram on 01 Jan
1829 and removed to Lexington, Missouri where he
became partners with William Russell and
Alexander Majors forming the well-known Pony
Express. William died at the age of sixty-five on
01 Apr 1872, and his widow passed away on 02 Mar
1894.
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