Dr.
John Slaughter, namesake of Slaughter Road, married Mary Lanford and
had a daughter Charlotte (“Lottie”) who married James H. Cain, a Madison
merchant. Dr. Slaughter’s wife lived was
raised in the mansion of her father, William Lanford, who was a son of Madison
County pioneer Robert Lanford. Robert
and Bartholomew Jordan (a Revolutionary War patriot) were charter members of
one of the earliest Methodist churches in north Alabama, known as Jordan’s
Chapel, located near the Botanical Gardens on Bob Wallace Avenue. Robert had come to the area with LeRoy Pope,
the “Father of Huntsville”. Robert’s son
William married Bartholomew Jordan’s granddaughter Charlotte Fennell, daughter
of Isham J. Fennell and his wife Temperance Jordan. The Fennell monument is one of the largest in
Huntsville’s Maple Hill Cemetery.
Dr. Slaughter was a physician in Huntsville when he married
Mary Lanford, but when her father William developed stomach trouble in his
latter years, he moved his practice to the Lanford mansion on the east side of
Indian Creek, immediately north of the “S-curves” of Old Madison Pike. The mansion today is almost entirely hidden
from view by trees, but it is still one of the most impressive in the region,
having been the social center of the area, with many elaborate dance parties
held there in the 1850s and 1860s. After
William Lanford’s death in 1881, his plantation was divided between Mary and
her sister Martha (Landford’s son Robert had been killed in the Battle of
Shiloh), with Mary inheriting the house and the southern portion of the
estate. Dr. Slaughter built a small
brick office building for his practice in front of the mansion, using the
mansion’s basement as a laboratory.
However, after his death and Mary’s passing in 1913 the house was sold
out of the family. Eventually, Dr.
Slaughter’s office was used as a hatchery for chickens, but today it is gone.
Dr. Slaughter’s daughter
Lottie married James H. Cain in 1896 and moved to Madison. She had her new house built at the corner of
Arnett Street and Buttermilk Alley, which at that time was called Hobson
Street. Today Jeanne and Stan Steadman
live in the large dwelling. Jim Cain was
a brother of Robert Parham Cain, who married Lena Martin, a daughter of Elijah
Thomas Martin, who was a brother of George Washington Martin. Robert Parham Cain operated a store at 110
Main Street (Whitworth Realty today), believed to be the oldest store in
Madison. This building was constructed
for merchant G. W. Martin, who purchased the site on February 13, 1857, as the
first known sale of a lot in the town planned by James Clemens. A son of Robert Parham Cain, Robert Earl
Cain, continued to operate a store there, but tragedy struck in the 1920s. In April of 1928 his wife Annie Nance Cain
was struck and killed by a train as she crossed the tracks in Madison. In February of 1929, Robert Earl Cain Junior drowned
in a cistern behind the store, and his father moved away from town to Lawrence
County, where he became an automobile salesman.
He left his only surviving child, a daughter, in the care of his mother
and visited her in Madison frequently until his own passing.
