SALLIE ANN CONLEY THORNTON (1864-1931)

Sallie Ann Conley Thornton was born in 1864 in Huntsville, Alabama to Paschal Conley Sr. & Mary Steiger Conley. Her father, Paschal Conley Sr. was trained as a valet and in equine jobs as a child. As an adult, he became a prosperous livery and stable owner after the Civil War. Like his own father James Conley, Paschal Sr. and his siblings were indentured servants at the famous Green Bottom Inn & Equestrian Sporting Center from 1816 to 1845.

James and his sons built the stables, made the horse tack, and managed the horses for VIPs and dignitaries such as U.S. Presidents Jackson, Monroe and Polk, when Huntsville was a resort town. Such professions in the equestrian economy of the era meant the family enjoyed a comfortable, though precarious elevation in the strange social hierarchy of America prior to the Civil War. They were neither slave, nor free. The various family members were listed on government records as Colored, Black, White, Unknown. 

What made them standout was their skills, isolation from the broader society, and their commitment to one another. Indeed, the first three generations of Colored Conleys were a tightly knit family.

Sallie enjoyed a relatively privileged youth, common among the artisan class of ‘Free Coloreds’ in towns throughout the South. Each small town had them: a small group of families, usually of mixed race, who were trained by newly arrived European indentured servants to work for landowning whites. The ‘Colored’ men were trained in craftsman vocations like metal smithing, stone masonry, carpentry, woodworking, carriage making, gardening, barbering, and veterinarian roles.  The ‘Colored’ women were often trained as bakers, pottery, weaving, hairdressers, maids, and seamstresses. From about 1600 to 1900, these artisan Coloreds  served the needs of wealthy whites seeking to mimic the lifestyles of European landed gentry.

Sallies’s father Paschal Sr., was the first Colored benefactor of William H. Councill, helping to establish the Lincoln School in 1869, the precursor to Alabama A&M University. The Lincoln School, which was private, became the Huntsville State Normal School for Negroes (1875–1885) with money from the Federal Government, which gave way to the State Normal and Industrial School of Huntsville (1885–1896) funded by Alabama, which evolved yet again into The State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (1896–1919). After World War I, the school change names and directions again, become the State Agricultural and Mechanical Institute for Negroes (1919–1948). After World War II, the school harnessed the post World War II boom by becoming the modern day Alabama A&M College (1948–present) that we know today.

The Lincoln School provided Sallie with a basic education until she was 12, at which time she attended Huntsville State Normal School for Negroes until 1879. As was the norm in 1880, Sallie married as soon as a suitable husband presented himself. In this case, Sallie met and married John Scott. From the this marriage a daughter Jessie Lee was born. We do not know the circumstances of John Scott’s death, but we do know that Sallie became a very young widow not long after the marriage.

Sallie registered to become a nurse at her brother’s suggestion. She resumed her education briefly at the Huntsville Academy, where she received basic nurse training at the start of the Spanish-American War. When Sallie began her service in 1898, women of Asian and African ancestry were thought to be immune from Malaria, Yellow Fever, and other tropical viruses. Sallie would go on to serve as a military nurse from 1898 until 1908.

Sallie Conley was one of the original Contract Nurses who supported the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War of 1898. More than 1,500 women nurses worked as contract nurses during the Spanish-American War and subsequent military occupation of Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.

As part of the contract nurse initiative, the U.S. Army recruited 32 black ‘immune’ nurses, many of whom were immediately sent to Cuba. Sallie was one of the next wave of about 100 "immune" nurses.

The valor of these Women of Color led to the formation of the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) in 1901. However, the same women of African, Asian, and Spanish ancestry who created the Nurse Corps could not legally join the ANC until 1947.

After her deployment in Cuba and the Philippines, Sallie was assigned to Fort Robinson in Nebraska, where her brother Quartermaster Paschal Conley was also stationed. He had been a member of the original 24th Calvary Company ‘B’ and rose to prominence with his service in the celebrated 10th Calvary, Troop ‘M’ under the legendary General John J. Pershing. Her brother Paschal was a leader on military bases across the American West, and facilitated reading and sports activities for the troops.

Paschal’s best friend and aide-de-camp was Beverly Thornton, a highly educated widower, upon whom Paschal relied greatly. Beverly was graduate of Hampton University Class of 1882, and helped bring Paschal’s vision of poet-warriors to life.

An erudite and scholarly personality, his patriotism was evident as he wrote in the Hampton Alumni Bulletin in 1893, “I’m going to stand by my country, no matter how great the danger.”

Beverly suffered tragedy early in his adult life when his first wife and daughter died of sudden illness. Paschal paired his widower friend, and his widowed sister. It was Paschal’s suggestion that Beverly consider marrying his widowed sister Sallie. In 1904, at age 42, Sallie married Beverly Thornton at Fort Robinson in Nebraska.

Nearing the end of his career Paschal Jr. also secured key military roles for his sons, Charles and Edward. He also found military roles for his sister Fanny Conley Nemo’s children, and for his nephews who were Sallie’s grandsons. In 1906, Paschal Conley Jr. retired and settled into a new life in Montana, amassing considerable real estate holdings. A dutiful patriarch, Paschal secured the future.

1910-1915 Vermont

Sallie and her husband Beverly spent 1907 to 1909 deployed with the occupation forces in the Philippines. According to historian David Work of Texas A&M, “… in May 1909 [the 10th Calvary] boarded ship to return to the United States. The journey took two and a half months as the regiment sailed west by way of Singapore, Ceylon, Saudi Arabia, the Suez Canal, Malta, and Gibraltar. On July 25, the Tenth arrived in New York City where it was greeted by the greatest public demonstrations any Buffalo Soldier regiment ever received.”

The New York Times reported on July 26, 1909, that a large crowd of greeting the troops upon their arrival at the peer now known as South Street Seaport. The next day the 10th Calvary was treated to a ticker tape parade, which proceeded up Wall Street from present-day South Street Seaport, then north on Broadway, ending at City Hall Park. The remarkable day ended with a banquet. The following morning the 10th Cavalry proceeded to its new post, Fort Ethan Allen, Vermont.

It was the apex of the social prestige of the Buffalo Soldiers. The 10th Calvary made their way up to New England, arriving on July 28, 1909.

As a senior member of the Buffalo Solider community, and as the sister of 2nd Lt. Paschal Conley Jr., Sallie and Beverly Thornton became leaders at Fort Ethan Allen.

In 1915, when the Buffalo Soldiers finished their four-year stay, and were reassigned to a new fort in Arizona, Beverly Thornton retired. He and Sallie remained in the with four other Buffalo Soldier Families. All of the remaining families integrated neatly into the community of Greater Burlington. Sallie and Thornton acquired a generous plot of land and built a family compound with homes for themselves as well as Sallie’s daughter Jessie Lee, her husband Zan Scruggs, and their seven children.

After 1915, Sallie took domestic work in the Burlington, Vermont area. Like her father and uncles had done, she clearly leveraged her proximity to wealth and relative anonymity to listen in on her employers’ conversations for countless valuable investing tips. Her last surviving grandchild believed that is how Sallie accumulated the funds to buy the land for the Conley Compound with four homes on current day Thornton Drive on the edge of Burlington.

INCLUSION:

Sallie Ann Conley Thornton left an extraordinary legacy of inclusion. Every Conley, whether self-identifying as Asian, Black, Latino, or White owes debt to Sallie.

It’s Conley First, Conley Forever, and Forever a Conley.

She was the true heiress to her grandparent’s fight to hold the family together against institutional bias. She was one of the many Conleys who chose to maintain the family’s value system that emphasized family cohesion above racial categorization.

Both Sallie’s grandparents James & Jane Conley were mixed race, and their refusal to pass for white was a theme Sallie would carry forward with dignity. Indeed, four of her seven grandchildren would marry local New England WASP families, continuing the Conley Family’s multicultural embrace of the American Dream.

INSURANCE

Sallie used insurance policies to circumvent legal barriers to women owning assets. In 1898, she obtained multiple insurance policies, which named her daughter as the beneficiary. Only a handful of women of color held such policies before 1920. Like the Rockefellers, she used insurance as an asset. 

BANKING

Sallie was an original member of an early form of credit union, called the The Independent Order of Immaculates (or IOI). It offered Colored Women financial products like bank accounts, life insurance, and health insurance without the co-signature of a man. Sallie and other Conley women appeared to have helped establish the Huntsville Lodge similar to what we know call a ‘branch office’.

NAOMI DICKERSON - NURSING STUDENT

Naomi is the third-great-granddaughter of Sallie Ann Conley Thornton, and embodies two traditions: sports and healthcare.

An NCAA college softball player player for Georgia Tech, she is the best of the scholar athlete tradition started by her third-great uncle Levi Burgess Scruggs as a football player for University of Vermont in 1922.

After her recent graduation from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration, she extended another family tradition in Nursing. She is currently a nursing student in Nashville, Tennessee.

She is studying bone health with a focus on the connection between exercise and osteoporosis.

MARQUISE E. PRUITT - REGISTERED NURSE

Marquise is the 5th great-granddaughter of family progenitors James & Jane Conley, and 4th great-granddaughter of William ‘Bill’ Conley, and 3x-great-granddaughter of Josie Conley Wilburn, who was the 1st cousin to pioneering Army Nurse Sallie Conley Thornton.

After graduation from University of Alabama at Birmingham, Marquise trained for her nursing career at University of North Georgia.

She is a Registered Nurse at the teaching hospital of Baylor College of Medicine - CHI St. Luke's Health in Houston, Texas. Her specialty is Bariatric Surgery and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) management.