Archilles P. Allen

Archilles Pinkney was born December 5, 1828, in Lee County, Virginia to John and Martha (Clark) Allen. Known also as A.P. or Pink, he was a child when he moved with his parents and siblings to Edgar County, Illinois. It was there that he met and married Elizabeth Fitzgerald on June 19, 1855. Later that same year they sold their land in Brouillette Township to his brother-in-law, Jonathan Basford, apparently in preparation for their trek westward in the spring. His widowed mother, Martha, also sold her land to the Basfords.

A.P. and Elizabeth established themselves in Fort Calhoun in March of 1856, two months before is brother, John, and several months after his other brothers, Thomas, Robert, and Clinton. In October of 1857, he secured a bounty land warrant for 80 acres of land described as the S ½ of the SE ½ of Section 22, Township 17, Range 12 N.

Pink became a prominent citizen and early promoter of the new town. He opened the first grocery and general store in Fort Calhoun and by some reports built the first house on the townsite. He and a man named Colonel Stevens picked the site for the Fort Calhoun cemetery. A.P. also claimed to have hauled the first coffin there, that of George Nevell. Prior to the laying out of cemetery, Pink said there had only been two deaths in the township, both victims of a claim jumping.

At the time of the great Civil War, Pink and his family moved to Nodaway County, Missouri, where two of his brothers, a sister, and probably his mother were living. He mustered in to the Union forces with his brothers, Robert and Clinton, in 1864, where he served as a Private in the Missouri Militia, 36th Regiment. The family returned to Fort Calhoun after the war was over.

Pink and Elizabeth were the parents several children, but only four daughters lived to adulthood, Clara Belle, Lucy “Nettie”, Victoria Martha, and Jenny Maude. Victoria contracted scarlet fever as a child and as a result was deaf. Pink and Elizabeth moved to Omaha by 1880, presumably so that Victoria could study at the newly opened Nebraska School for the Deaf. Elizabeth died December 6th of that same year, and Pink lived until November 10, 1898. They are both buried in the Fort Calhoun Cemetery. He was a member of the GAR.

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