Singletary, Sara Allen

Mrs. Thomas P. Singletary, Livingston Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller

Mrs. Thomas P. Singletary is a gracious and popular Louisiana gentlewoman who has shown marked capacity for the handling of business interests of important order and who is a leader in both social and civic affairs in the capital city of Baton Rouge. Upon the death of her husband she here assumed the active control and management of the Baton Rouge Business College, the most important institution of the kind in Louisiana outside the City of New Orleans, and her regime as executive head of this excellent college has been marked by a splendid growth in the service and value of the institution.

Mrs. Singletary, whose maiden name was Sara Allen, was born on the homestead plantation of the family in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, and is a daughter of the late Clinton and Louisa (Dixon) Allen, the former of whom was born in South Carolina, February 11, 1822, and the latter of whom was born in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, in March, 1830. Clinton Allen was reared in his native state and received liberal educational advantages in his youth. After the death of his father he accompanied his widowed mother, his six brothers and his one sister to Louisiana, where the family home was established in Livingston Parish. He became one of the extensive and successful representatives of plantation industry in that parish, where he operated also his own cotton gin, and he was one of the honored and influential citizens of that parish at the time of his death, in February, 1872. His widow long survived him and died August 12, 1897, while visiting at Denham Springs, this state.

Mr. Allen was a staunch advocate of the principles of the democratic party, and was a loyal and gallant soldier of the Confederacy during virtually the entire period of the Civil war. Of the children of Mr. and Mrs. Allen the eldest is Dallas, who resides on and has the active management of the old homestead plantation in Livingston Parish; Alice is the widow of Benjamin C. Dupree, D. D. S., and resides in Baton Rouge; Dr. John C. was one of the prominent physicians and surgeons at Baton Rouge at the time of his death, in 1905; Dr. Lawson, who likewise became a physician and surgeon of ability, died on the old homestead plantation, as did also his twin brother, Dawson, who there gave his attention to agricultural enterprise; Sara (Mrs. Singletary) is the immediate subject of this review; Minnie died at the age of nineteen years, and Harmason was four years old at the time of his death.

Under the preceptorship of a private tutor at the family home Mrs. Sara (Allen) Singletary received her preliminary educational discipline, which was thereafter advanced by her attending Reade Villa Seminary at Baton Rouge, and Norvilla Seminary in St. Helena Parish. In the latter institution she was graduated as a member of the class of 1884, and her degree of Bachelor of Arts was later supplemented by that of Master of Arts.On the 8th of January, 1889, was solemnized the marriage of Dr. Thomas P. Singletary and Miss Sara Allen, and their ideal marital companionship continued until the death of the Doctor at Baton Rouge on the 23d of January, 1916.

Dr. Thomas P. Singletary was born in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, April 12, 1860, and died at the age of fifty-five years and nine months, he was graduated from historic old Henry and Emory College, Virginia, and received a most liberal professional education. He became one of the distinguished physicians and surgeons of his native commonwealth, served many years as coroner of East Baton Rouge Parish, and at the time of his death was official physician for the Louisiana Institute for the Blind. The Doctor served as president of the East Baton Rouge Medical Society, and was an active member also of the Louisiana State Medical Society. He held for a brief period the position of local surgeon for the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad, and incidentally became a member of the Order of Railway Surgeons. He was a stalwart supporter of the cause of the democratic party, was affiliated with various social and fraternal organizations, including the Woodmen of the World, and was a zealous member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

Dr. and Mrs. Singletary became the parents of three children: Alice is the wife of David W. Thomas, a publisher, and they reside in Baton Rouge; Tom is secretary and treasurer of the Commercial Security Company of Baton Rouge; and Katharine is, in 1924, a student in the University of Louisiana.Mrs. Singletary is loyally aligned in the ranks of the democratic party, and is a zealous member of the First Baptist Church of Baton Rouge, besides which she is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Protestant Orphans' Home at Baton Rouge, a trustee of the Baton Rouge Sanitarium, a director of the Commercial Securities Company, and a member of the library board of the local organization of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Since 1917 Mrs. Singletary has been the owner and efficient manager of the Baton Rouge Business College, and she has brought the institution up to a very high standard in all departments of its work. She is the owner of two business buildings in the capital city-the Allen Building, at 351 Florida Street, and the Singletary Building, at 228 Third Street. She is the owner also of a plantation in Livingston Parish and of her beautiful home place in Baton Rouge, at 315 Church Street.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 116, by Henry E. Chambers. Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.