Mrs. H. L. Sloan, whose maiden name was Eliza Agnes Castle, was born in Ashtabula County, Ohio, in November, 1832. She was educated at Kingsville Academy and at a school for young ladies in Madison, Ohio. In June, 1854, she was married to Horace L. Sloan, with whom she went to the prairie town of Kewanee, Ill., then being laid out on the C. B. & Q. R. R., where the young couple were among the earliest to take up a residence and where they identified themselves with nearly every improvement made. In 1863, Mr. and Mrs. Sloan moved to Chicago, where the latter was interested in several chartiable societies, being twice elected president of one, serving four years, and serving two years as secretary of another.
Mrs. Sloan is a lineal descendant, on her mother’s side, of Gov. John Winthrop, and on her father’s, of the English Stanley family. She came to Redlands with her husband and her daughter, now Mrs. A. H. Pratt, in 1887; at once adopted California as home and accomplished all that was in her power, in the early days for the progress of Redlands. After Mr. Sloan’s death, in 1891, Mrs. Sloan and her daughter and son-in-law continued the business of the Sloan House for some time. They were afterward at the Windsor, and now preside over the destinies of Seven Oaks, a mountain summer resort of which Mr. Pratt is proprietor.
(Source: Illustrated Redlands, 1897, p. 52)