Allen Pioneers of Washington County

The story of our Allen heritage in Washington County, Nebraska, would not be complete without including several brothers of our forefather, John M. Allen. Thomas J., William, Robert, Clinton, Archilles P., and John M., sons of John D. and Martha (Clark) Allen, were among the earliest pioneers to settle in Nebraska Territory. They purchased bounty land from less adventuresome soldiers, and settled near old Fort Atkinson or in the hills west of it, where they played a significant role in the settlement of Washington County.

John D. and Martha (Clark) Allen bore twelve children, ten boys and two girls, in southwest Virginia, just a few miles from the Cumberland Gap and Daniel Boone’s Wilderness Road which was some of the poorest land in the state. After three decades in Virginia, land and census records indicate that about 1830, John and Martha and eleven of their twelve children left the poverty and Indian hostilities and traveled north to the fertile Wabash River Valley. They settled in Brouillette Creek Township in Edgar County, Illinois, near the hamlet of Logan, a few miles from the Indiana border.

In 1836, just a few years of their arrival in Illinois, John and an eight-year old daughter, Margaret, died. They were buried on the family farm in what would become a family cemetery. That cemetery no longer exists. The stones have been destroyed and the land reclaimed for farming.

Within the next few years the brothers married local girls and acquired public domain lands near each other in Brouillette Creek Township, Edgar County, Illinois, where they lived and farmed for at least another decade.

On May 30, 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act became the law, which allowed the creation of the Nebraska Territory. With the anticipation of the area being opened for settlement, land speculators began arriving in what became Washington County, most competing in a dream of creating a town and having that town become the county seat, or state capital. The settlers had every reason to believe that the location of the council on the bluffs some fifty years earlier would become the great commercial city and the hub of the westward movement. At one time Fort Atkinson was one of the busiest sites on the Missouri River, as shipping had long been established at nearby fur trading posts. The Allen brothers were among the first to settle near Old Fort Atkinson.

Thomas J. Allen was the first to arrive in Washington County. He is listed in the Nebraska census for 1855. There is an indication that another male of the same age was living with him. This was probably his brother, Robert. By the time the census was taken in 1856, Thomas, Robert, Archilles, and John were all listed as residents of Fort Calhoun.

Vinton, Merri Allen, Hillbillies & Hexsigns, “A Study of the Ancestors and Descendants of William Henry Allen & Ruth Emily Bottorff, of Washington County, Nebraska,” 2008.