Rev. Dr. William Bradner Slaughter was born on July 15, 1822, in Benton Center, Yates County, New York.

He was a clergyman. He served in several parishes of the Methodist Episcopal Church in New York (1845), Colorado (1863), and Nebraska (1866). He wrote the book "The Modern Genesis: Being an Inquiry Into the Credibility of the Nebular Theory, of the Origin of Planetary Bodies, the Structure of the Solar system, and of General Cosmical History" (1876).

In 1843, he married Sarah Buck (1819–1850), in 1850, he remarried Lucinda Butterfield (1829–1855) and, in 1855, Adelaide Butterfield (1832–1914). He died on July 26, 1879, in Omaha, Douglas County, Nebraska.