JOHN B SLACK

SLACK, JOHN B    20 May 1820 – 26 JULY 1896

AGE: 76Y 2M 6D

MASONIC EMBLEM

Buried 27 Jul 1896. Died at age 76 years, 2 months, and 6 days of heart failure.

Civil War Veteran – Union

Cousin of Philip Arnold who together pulled off the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872.

Son of Reuben Slack & Letitia Bush.

His brother was William Henry Slack

William Henry Slack

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added by :William Haenn ID
49284691
NOT a Civil War veteran!
Veteran of the Mexican War, private Company B, 2nd Kentucky Infantry, 1846-47.

Slack also in 1885 Census

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Name:	John Burcham Slack
Birth Date:	20 May 1820
Birth Place:	Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky, United States of America
Death Date:	26 Jul 1896
Death Place:	White Oaks, Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States of America
Cemetery:	Cedarvale Cemetery
Burial or Cremation Place:	White Oaks, Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States of America
Has Bio?:	Y
URL:	https://www.findagrave.com/mem…

Newspaper Clippings

• 8 Articles for john Slack

Lincoln County Ownership

• See Ownership

See Interactive Map  Ownership

• 

Ancestry.com

• LISTED 

ABOUT HIS INVOLVEMENT INTHE GREAT DIAMOND HOAX:

Philip Arnold had acquired a partner, John Burcham Slack, an aptly named older cousin from Kentucky who, like Arnold, had fought in the Mexican War and had gone after gold in 1849. Indeed, in the months ahead, as the two men hatched their scheme, Slack played the listless, taciturn foil to the voluble and cunning Arnold.

John Slack was assumed to have either fled the country or died soon after leaving the diamond fields. But in 1967, Bruce A. Woodard, an accountant who had become obsessed with the hoax, asserted in his book, Diamonds in the Salt, that Slack had taken a job building caskets in St. Louis. Eventually, according to Woodard, Slack moved to White Oaks, New Mexico, where he became an undertaker, living alone until his death at age 76 in 1896. He left behind an estate of $1,600. Here’s the story:

One day January, 1872 two dirty, bearded and disheveled prospectors, John Slack and Philip Arnold (who were cousins from ELizabethtown, Kentucky), appeared at a bank in San Francisco early in the morning and attempted to deposit a small leather pouch full of uncut diamonds. After they had managed to do so, they disappeared.

The diamonds were shown to officers of the bank, who in turn showed them to William Chapman Ralston, a director of the Bank of California and then to other capitalists in the city. The prospectors agreed to take General David Colton, a representative of the capitalists, to the place they found the diamonds but insisted that he must first be blindfolded. They set off together on the Union Pacific Railroad to a location, after which they made a four-day journey through mountains and canyons to where they had made their discovery. Colton was extremely cautious, however, and brought Arnold and his diamonds to New York City to the firm of Charles Tiffany. He confirmed the authenticity of the gems and declared them to be “a rajah’s ransom.”

A group of California financiers assembled and made Plans to begin mining at once if the claim proved genuine. A team of experts from Tiffany’s in New York examined the diamonds and confirmed that they were of tremendous value. When the investors were still reluctant, Arnold agreed to guide a mining engineer to the site of the claim.

Swiftly, the investors chartered a corporation -to develop their find. They prepared a stock issue, filed claims, and even began lobbying to get mining laws changed in their favor. When Arnold and Slack dragged their feet, the corporation bought them out, paying $600,000 for all rights to the mine. The prospectors vanished, promptly and completely.

A young government geologist named Clarence King blew the whistle. Locating the site by a masterful bit of detective work, King spent several days there. In that time, he developed ten separate reasons why diamonds could not occur naturally under such conditions. An eleventh bit of evidence was a small diamond picked up by one of King’s associates early in the search.

Later investigation traced the diamonds to the markets of London and Amsterdam. Arnold had visited both cities in 1871, paying cash for large numbers of low-grade or “bort” diamonds. The total purchases seem to have amounted to about $40,000.

Phillip Arnold had returned to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, his home town. He was living there in quiet respectability when detectives located him, and he had all the money paid for the claim. Slack was never found. Since Arnold had clearly held onto the loot, there was much dark speculation as to Slack’s probable fate, but that mystery was never solved.

The investors soon learned that finding Arnold was only part of the problem. No hometown jury was prepared to convict him of anything whatever, and the prospector vigorously fought the charges leveled against him. The investors still hadn’t decided how to handle the situation when Arnold got into a business dispute with a local rival. No stickler for legalities, the rival settled the matter by shooting Arnold dead.

From rich Californian bankers to the European aristocracy, all are drawn by the promise of the latest, extraordinary fortune to be made in the New World.

That was the beginning of the end for poor Ralston, whose bank failed in the panic of 1875, and he ended as a suicide in the waters of the Golden Gate. The prospectors disappeared, but Arnold was eventually traced to Kentucky where, on threat of lawsuit, he surrendered $150,000 of his ill-gotten gains.

Ralston shouldered the total loss himself.