The Ulster man who made Abraham Lincoln's boots
COBBLER Thomas Sloan was a remarkable man. He had a face "minus the proverbial wrinkles" and was a firm believer in total abstinence from alcohol. He was also reputed to have made boots for Abraham Lincoln.
During this week in 1928 the News Letter reported that the old native of Co Down had just celebrated his 115th birthday at Ponca City, Oklahoma, where he then lived.
It had been in 1812, during the war between England and America, that Sloan was born, and in 1826, as a boy of only 14, that he left Ulster shores for the United States of America.
Having arrived in America he had first lived along the Atlantic coast and for six years had been employed as a seaman on merchant ships.
He then lived for some 26 years in Mulhall, Oklahoma, and had worked as the town's cobbler.
It had been just before the American Civil War when he had been working in Illinois that he had reputedly made boots for Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A Douglas.
Douglas had served the state of Illinois in both the House of Representatives and the US Senate while the former having been assassinated in 1865 while serving his second term as US president.
It was reported by the News Letter that for some time Mr Sloan had been living in Guthrie, Oklahoma, with his step-daughter, a Mrs Nickens.
He had been married twice and his second wife had died in September 1927. His only child, a boy, had died in infancy.
Mr Sloan had never used tobacco or "intoxicating liquors" and he declared that the scent of "those horrible things is too pole-cattish".
He believed that abstinence had had much to do with prolonging his years and he added that he did not remember having had more than one serious illness in his whole life.
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Wednesday 15 February 2012
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