Isabella R. Slack
Isabella Rickards Slack was born April 7, 1820 to Dr. and Mrs. Gustavus Bower. Dr. Bower was a noted surgeon in the War of 1812 and served as a member of Congress from Missouri. Adventurer Davy Crockett was a cousin to her. After the death of her first husband, Frank Hollingsworth in Paris, MO, in 1858, Isabella moved to Chillicothe and bought one of the few available homes on a large tract on north Washington Street. The railroad from Hannibal to St. Joseph was not completed until 1859 so a good deal of her journey would have been by stagecoach. For one year she taught music at the Beecham Academy in Chillicothe.
On January 12, 1859 she married William Y. Slack. After his death in 1862 at the Battle of Pea Ridge during the Civil War, she chose to remain in Chillicothe. In 1889 she was appointed a member of the Board of Control by Governor Marmaduke for the Industrial Home for Girls. The first meetings of this board were held in her home since the buildings at the new institution were not yet completed. Slack Cottage at the Industrial Home, which opened in 1902, was named in her honor. Colonel Switzler, editor of the Chillicothe Constitution, suggested in 1902 that they rename the Cottage to the Isabella R. Slack Cottage, to be very clear just WHO they were naming it after. While that seems not to have happened, she has been remembered after all these years. Isabella remained on this board until her death on July 22, 1910. Her obituary states she was a woman of “business instinct” and that her “judgement was confidently relied on.”
After her death, her only son, Gustavus, and his wife Cora, lived in the home until Cora’s death in 1912. By about 1914 Gustavus was subdividing and selling the Slack property into smaller lots for homes. A number of homes were built on these smaller lots and stood for many years. Around 2008 several of these homes were torn down to make way for a new Walgreens. And, of course, in 2020, we opened the Lillian DesMarias Youth Library on the old Slack property.
No picture for Mrs. Slack would be found.