Nancy Mickey Thornton (maiden name: Huston) was born on June 2, 1811, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to Jonathan Huston and Nancy Mickey. Her mother died shortly after she was born, and her father re-married by the late 1810s. Nancy married George Logue in Carlisle by the early 1830s, but he died several years later.
Nancy eventually moved to Missouri and worked as a school teacher. She married lawyer Jesse Quinn Thornton in Hannibal, Missouri, on February 8, 1838. The couple moved to Quincy, Illinois, around April 1841, and poor health prompted them to travel west to Oregon in 1846. They left Quincy on April 18, 1846, and travelled with the Donner Party for several weeks before their paths diverged. The couple settled in Oregon City, and Nancy taught classes at the Clackamas County Female Seminary.
During the Civil War, Nancy and her husband remained passionately loyal to the Union. In May 1861, she presented a “beautiful American Flag” to a Union meeting in Albany, Oregon. In 1868, Nancy and Jesse petitioned to adopt a four-year-old girl named Jessie Mickie Nicolai, whose parents had “willfully deserted and neglected to provide proper care” for her. A court granted their request on July 11, 1868, and they renamed the child Jessie Thornton. As a local writer observed, “Mrs. Thornton was exceedingly charitable, and her life was a perpetual summer of good deeds…With her, love never failed.” The family moved to Salem, Oregon, around 1872, and her husband died there on February 5, 1888. Nancy followed on January 4, 1889, and she was buried in Lee Mission Cemetery.
| Name: | Thornton, Nancy Mickey | |||||||||
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| Gender: | Female | |||||||||
| Race: | White | |||||||||
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| Birth date: | 1811-06-02 | |||||||||
| Birth date certainty: | Certain | |||||||||
| Birth place: | Carlisle, PA | |||||||||
| Death date: | 1889-01-05 | |||||||||
| Death place: | Salem, OR | |||||||||
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| Occupations: | Teacher | |||||||||
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Biographical Annals of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: The Genealogical Publishing Co., 1905); Vicki Halper, “Northwestern Exposure,” Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, ed. Patricia Trenton (Los Angeles, LA: University of California Press, 1995); Carlisle Weekly Herald, 19 December 1837; Staunton Spectator, 29 March 1838; The Oregon Sentinel, 1 June 1861; Corvallis Gazette-Times, 1 August 1868; Statesman Journal, 5 January 1889.
