Corsicana, Texas
Corsicana, Texas
This
home was built by Dr. Alexander Colvin Sloan in 1884 on the southwest corner
of West 5th Avenue and North 15th Street
Dr.
Sloan was born in Montgomery, Alabama on March 31, 1843. He graduated from
Magnolia Academy in Montgomery. He joined the Confederate Army on
March 2, 1862 at the age of 18 and was attached to 1st Alabama
Cavalry Co. “B” and within weeks faced his first engagement with the enemy
at the Battle of Shiloh out of which he was one of the few survivors. During
the Civil War, he was wounded three times, being hospitalized for three
months after the Battle of Chickamauga, and had two horses shot out from
under him. He remained with the Confederate Army until the surrender, after
which he went to study medicine at the University of Louisville, Kentucky.
He
and all his family moved to Texas in 1870, where he set up an office in
Dresden, Texas. He married Lucy Shakelford and remained in Dresden for
12 years until her death and the death of her infant daughter. He
then went to London, England and studied at Guy’s Medical & Surgical
College. He evidently went with a broken heart having lost his wife and
child as evidenced by a poem written by him (of them) while he was in London,
and found in his office desk and published by the Corsicana newspaper at
his own death in 1906.
During
his stay in England, he became Texas’ 1st Representative to
the International Medical Conference held in London in 1881. Before
returning to Texas he attended Bellvue Medical College in New York City,
finally coming back home to Texas and building a new home for his second
wife, Henrietta Ormsby. Their son, Blanding
Sloan, became well known to all Corsicanans as a very talented artist
and was famous in both New York and Hollywood. After Etta’s
death, Dr. Alex Sloan’s youngest brother, John Sloan, and wife, Lula, came
to live with him, occupying an apartment on the upper floor. Their
children were Hugh Sloan, Ben Lloyd Sloan and Blanche Sloan Everette.
Dr.
Sloan married for the third time to Lelia Florence Smith in 1891.
Dr. Sloan died in 1916, and this home remained the residence of wife, Lelia
F. Sloan, until her death in 1945. The house was then sold and torn
down.
James Blanding Sloan had two sons and one daughter, Alexander Colvin Sloan, II of Green Bay, Wisconsin; Taylor Sloan of Canyon, California; and June Edda Sloan Allmon of Streetman, Texas
| “Alone I walk the peopled city
Where each seems
happy with his own;
Oh, friends, I ask
not for your pity;
I walk alone.
The gold is rifled from the coffer, The blade is stolen
from the sheath;
Life has but one
more boon to offer,
And that is death.
Yet will I know the voice of duty? And therefore life
and health must crave,
She who gave the
world its beauty
Is in her grave.
O live, O lost one—for the living, Who drew their earliest
life from thee,
And wait until the
glad thanksgiving
I shall be free.
For life to me is a station Where in a port a
traveler stands,
Absent long from
home and nation,
In other lands.
|
And I as he who stands and listens,
Amid the twilight
chill and gloom,
To hear approaching
in the distance
The train for home.
For death shall bring another mating Beyond the shadow
of the tomb;
On yonder shore a
bride is waiting
Until I come.
In yonder fields are children playing, And there, Oh, vision
of delight;
I see the child and
mother straying,
In robes of white.
Thou, then, the longing heart that breakest, Stealing the treasures
one by one,
Ill call thee blessed
when thou makest
The parted, one.”
A.C. Sloan London, Nov. 24,
1882
|
Alexander Colvin Sloan was the son of Hugh Sloan and Eliza Rutledge
Colvin
of Duplin Co. NC, Lowndes Co. AL. and finally Navarro Co. TX
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