A Watchmaker from Leicestershire

• Alfred Ernest Allen (also known as “Allan”), the third and youngest child¹ of Silas Allen, a saddler, and Mary née Chester, was born on 14 August 1847 in Chapel Street, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, an ancient market town, world famous for its pork pies and Stilton cheese.
• The Leicester Journal, 8 December 1854, covering the Melton Mowbray Petty Sessions held three days earlier, reported that “Leonard Posnett, of Melton, was fined 1s. and costs for assaulting a little lad named Alfred Ernest Allen.” Was this bizarre incident a precursor to the future cavalryman’s trouble-ridden life ahead? An unsubstantiated image of Walter Brett Allen [below] and his father, Silas Allen, ca. 1860.²

• On the death of his father in 1857, Silas Allen took over the family’s long-established saddle and harness making business and moved to nearby 23 King Street in the centre of town. A census taken four years later recorded forty-three-year-old Silas, a master saddler, living at the same address with his wife, Mary, aged forty-one, and thirteen-year-old son, Alfred, who was apprenticed to a watchmaker.³
• At an unknown date prior to 2 April 1871⁴ Alfred crossed the Atlantic and found lodgings in a small boarding house in Saint John, New Brunswick (NB), Canada, run by Mary (née Hamilton) Fletcher,⁵ the widowed mother of four young children.⁶  On the 29th of  July the following year, Alfred and Mary, who was not only ten years the groom’s senior but most likely with child, were married in Saint John by the Rev’d W. S. McKenzie. A son, Harry Fletcher Allen, their only child, was born south of the border in Bangor, Maine, on 20 March 1873.⁷
• A little over six months later, on 3 October, Alfred unexpectedly turns up in Boston, Massachusetts to be enlisted in the United States Army by Lieutenant James M. Ropes, 8th Cavalry,⁸ under the name “Fred E. Allan.” He was described as having brown eyes, black hair, a dark complexion, standing 5′ 8 1/8″ tall, age 25, born Melton, England, a watchmaker.⁹ The fact that he did not declare his marital status strongly suggests he had deserted his wife, stepchildren, and son, none of whom he was destined ever to see again.
• From Boston Private Fred Allan was sent to the St. Louis Depot, Missouri, and assigned to Company C, 7th Cavalry, which he joined at Fort Rice, Dakota Territory, on 21 October 1873.¹⁰ He participated in the Black Hills Expedition in 1874, was engaged on extra duty in the Subsistence Department from September 1874 to October 1875 and, again,  from 5 January to 13 May 1876,¹¹ just four days before the regiment marched west from Fort Abraham Lincoln on its way to confront the hostile Sioux who had ignored an ultimatum to report to a designated reservation on or before the 31 January that year.
• Allen served with his company as part of [Brevet Major General] Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s five-company column on the first day of the Battle of the Little Bighorn when all 209 men under Custer’s direct command were killed by an overwhelming force of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians.
• In common with the vast majority of the enlisted men, Alfred’s body was not identified but it is accepted that, in 1881, his remains were finally re-interred in the mass grave surrounding the newly erected memorial shaft on the summit of Last Stand Hill. He is listed as F. E. ALLAN on the battle monument– 8th from the top of the left-hand column in an upper panel.
• Private Allen, Company C., is numbered among the U.S. personnel killed or wounded in the battle, whose names were published in the Bismarck Weekly Tribune, Bismarck, Dakota Territory, Wednesday, 12 July 1876.
• The FINAL STATEMENT of Private Fred E. Allan [Captain T. W. Custer’s Company] was signed by Captain Henry Jackson,¹¹ Commanding Company C, at Fort Abraham Lincoln, on 9 October 1876.  …
• DUE SOLDIER
• Retained pay … $8.36
• Clothing not drawn in kind … $22.74
• Deposited with the Paymaster 19 July 1875 … $6.50
• Proceeds of sale of personal effects [15 June 1877] … $10.20
• DUE UNITED STATES
• Tobacco … $1.14
• Indebted to Mrs. Bobo for laundry … $2.00.¹³
•  
• Shortly after the regiment returned from the disastrous summer campaign, the Army set up a board of survey to take an inventory of the property of the troopers killed, of which Lieutenant Charles C. De Rudio, Company E, was appointed recorder. It is perhaps not unreasonable to assume, as in the case of Private John S. Hiley (real name John Stuart Stuart Forbes), that among the items in Allan’s trunk back at Fort Abraham Lincoln was correspondence which revealed Allan’s true identity. If so, presumably De Rudio, or another member of the board, wrote to his parents giving details of their son’s death, otherwise how else would they have been able to produce such an accurately worded mourning card (below)¹⁴ as early as the first few days of 1877?
• This priceless item, which is on display in the Melton Carnegie Museum, Melton Mowbray, includes two haunting references to an apparently errant son. The first quotes a Biblical text: “In the bitterness of thy soul cry unto the Lord, and He will hear thee and have mercy,” while the second is even more ominous for it says “De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” meaning “Let nothing be said of the dead but what is good.” Both imply that Alfred had committed a serious indiscretion which had brought shame upon his highly respected parents before fleeing these shores for North America?”

• On 12 January 1877, the Leicester Mercury printed the following notice – “[Deaths] – On the 25th of June, killed by Sioux Indians at the fork of the Big Horn river, Dacotah Territory, Alfred Ernest youngest son of Mr. Silas Allen of Melton Mowbray, aged 29 (sic).” 
• Another boarder in Mary Fletcher’s house in Saint John, in April 1871, was a 25-year-old Englishman, named Charles Allen. possibly a close relative of Alfred’s. Writing to the Adjutant General’s Office, Washington, D.C., 24 January 1877 he was seeking information about the deceased soldier. A letter to Allen, dated 1 February 1877, reads: “In reply to your enquiry of Jany 24 1877, I have to furnish you the following information from the records of this office: Fred. E. Allan Pvt. Co. ‘C’ 7 Cav. was killed in action with the Sioux Indians June 25, 1876. He was born in Melton, England aged 28 years and by occupation a Watchmaker. Orders of January 31, 1877, Fort Totten D.T.”¹⁵ The identity of the ‘mystery correspondent’ has not been established.
• During the next few years Silas Allen’s good fortune was to take a dramatic turn for the worse as on 3 April 1881, he and his wife are found languishing in the Union Workhouse, Sparkenhoe Street, Leicester?¹⁶   One can readily understand that such social humiliation would have been hard to bear for  a proud and educated man as Silas who, on 21 April 1881, having suffered from headaches for many months, committed suicide by cutting his throat “when in a state of temporary insanity.”¹⁷ The Rutland Echo and Leicestershire Advertiser, 30 April 1881, reported that “Silas Allen’s death, in the Leicester Union will be heard of in Melton with great regret. His wonderful ability as a scriptist (sic) and his powers of satire had made him a noted man in the town for many years.” The fate of Mary Allen is uncertain.
• Nothing further transpired until 24 April 1889 when Mary Fletcher Allen, then living in 9 Drouet Terrace, Somerville, Boston, Massachusetts, signed a Declaration for Widow’s Pension before the Clerk of the Municipal Court of the City of Boston,¹⁸ who had appointed Joseph B. Parsons,¹⁹ State Pension Agent, to handle the case. Mary stated that she was the widow of Alfred E. Allan whom she had married on 29 July 1872 in Saint John, New Brunswick. The fact nearly thirteen years had passed since Alfred Allen was killed at the Little Bighorn reaffirms the assumption that he deserted his wife soon after, if not before, the birth of their only child, and until then had not made the connection that ‘Private Fred E. Allan’ was, indeed, her late husband.
• On 20 May 1889 an application for a widow’s pension, was formally filed by Parsons. A month later, in the Office of the Department of the Interior, a request was made that Mary Allen should produce evidence of her marriage to “Alfred or Fred E. Allan.”²⁰ An affidavit was duly signed by Mary in the Pension Department, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 29 Pemberton Square, Boston, on 28 June 1889, and countersigned by her son, George L. Fletcher, and son-in-law, Downey “Don” A. Starkweather as affiants. The affidavit stated “That the correct name of my husband was Alfred E. Allen. That the child Harry F. Allen who was born March 20th, 1873, is still living and resides with me at my home in the City of Somerville, County of Middlesex and State of Massachusetts.”  On 30 July 1889, Parsons again wrote to the Commissioner of Pensions for Massachusetts saying Mary Allen “has removed her residence to Moncton, N.B.”
• The pension claim was approved on 12 August 1889, at a rate of $8 a month from 26 June 1876 and $12 a month from 19 March 1886. In addition, a sum of $2 a month be paid for Harry, from 26 June 1876 until 19 March 1889, i.e., when Harry reached his 16th birthday. All pensions were to be back dated.²¹ Sadly, Mary Allen did not live long to enjoy her belated financial independence as on 23 December 1891 she died of dropsy and consumption, at a stated age of 54 years, 4 months and 20 days, in 28 Batavia Street, Boston.²²  Her widow’s pension of $12, was last paid on 4 December 1891 and her name dropped from roll on 31 October 1893. Mary’s body was taken the four hundred miles north by rail to Fernhill Cemetery, Saint John, NB, where she was reunited in death with George Fletcher, her first husband. Their personal details are inscribed on one of four panels at the base of an impressive red granite obelisk (left) to which is added, “Giveth us beloved sleep.”²³
• Harry Fletcher Allan remained in the United States, where he, too, succumbed to consumption in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts, on 27 October 1892. He was laid to rest beside his mother in the family plot in Fernside Cemetery where the following inscription was added to a second panel at the base of the monument ……

•                                                                  Harry Fletcher
•                                                                  Son of Alfred E.
•                                                                  And Mary F. Allen
•                                                                  Died Oct. 27, 1892
•                                                                  Aged 19 Years & 7 Mos.
•  ..….. which brings this melancholy tale to an end.
•  
• Notes and Sources:

1. 1. Alfred’s siblings – William Charles Allen, b. 27 October 1844, d. Canton, China, 9 December 1857 and Walter Brett Allen, b. 15 March1846, m. Elizbeth Ann Bradford Jackson at Port Resolution, Tanna, New Hebrides (Vanuatu), 13 January. !871, by the Scots-born missionary, Rev’d John Geddie (1815-1872), d. 22 February 1910, Balmain South, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
2. 2. Illustration courtesy of Sarah Green, a descendant of Walter Brett Allen.
3. 3. Census of England and Wales, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, 7 April 1861.
4. 4. Canada, New Brunswick Census, 2 April 1871.
5. 5.Mary Hamilton, daughter of Scots-Irish immigrants, Claudius Hamilton and Elizabeth née McConnell, born Saint John, New Brunswick, 3 August 1837. Married George L. Fletcher, 25 June 1859, by the Rev’d Samuel Robinson, Minister of the Brussels Street Church, Saint John. George Fletcher died of consumption in Port Elgin, Westmorland County, NB, 16 April 1868.
6. 6. Mary’s children – May I., b.1861; Laurie E., b. 1862; Alice M., b. 1864; George L., b. 1867.
7. 7. Ancestry Family Tree (Allen). A second source, findagrave, gives Saint John, NB.
8. 8. [Brevet Major] James Miller Ropes (b. 1828), promoted captain 9 October 1882. Died 4 June 1897. Buried Greenlawn Cemetery, Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts.
9. 9. United States Registers of Enlistments in the U.S. Army, 1798-1914.
10. 10. Williams, Roger L., Military Register of Custer’s Last Command, the Edward H. Clark Company, Norman, Oklahoma, 2009, p. 29.
11. 11. Williams, Military Register, p. 29.
12. 12. Henry Jackson, the only English-born officer in the regiment on 25 June 1876, had been on detached service from 9 August 1871 in the office of the Chief Signal Officer, USA, Washington, D.C., and did not participate in the Little Bighorn campaign, hence derisorily referred to as a “Coffee Cooler” by Captain Frederick W. Benteen on his appointment as captain with effect from 26 June 1876. He retired with the rank of brigadier general in 1904 and died at Leavenworth, Kansas, 9 December 1908. Buried Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery. Neither Jackson’s real name, date and place of birth, nor his claim to have served as an officer in the British Army during the Crimean War have ever been verified by an independent primary source.
13. 13. Missouri Ann Wycoff, widow of First Sergeant Lemuel E. Bobo, Company C., 7th Cavalry, killed on the first day of at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, married Sergeant Daniel A. Knipe (or Kanipe), also Company C., 7 th Cavalry at Fort Totten, Dakota Territory, 12 April 1877.
14. 14. Illustration courtesy of the Leicestershire County Council Museums service.
15. 15. U.S. Army Pension File.
16. 16. Census of England and Wales, Leicester, 3 April 1881.
17. 17. Reports of Silas Allen’s death and the coroner’s inquest were published in several local newspapers.
18. 18. U.S. Army Pension File Claim #395,708.
19. 19. [Lieutenant Colonel] Joseph Bailey Parsons (1828-1906) commanded the 10th Massachusetts Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg. The 416-strong regiment had marched thirty-five miles in 18 hours under a sweltering sun to reach the battlefield on 2 July 1863. They were put in a support position behind the Round Tops, then were moved north the following day. Although the 10th never fired a shot at Gettysburg, four men were wounded and five went missing due to the artillery barrage preceding Pickett’s Charge.
20. 21. The details of this marriage were verified by William Frith, Clerk of the Peace, Saint John, N.B., 9 May 1889 in support of Mary’s claim for a widow’s pension.
21. 21. U.S. Army Pension Certificate #258,868.
22. 22. Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915.
    Illustration courtesy of SarahRose Werner. Fernside Cemetery, Saint John, NB. Plot No. 1216 Juniper Path, Block 23.

• Remembering the late Gordon Green, Queensland, Australia, for generously sharing the findings of his own research into the life of Alfred Ernest Allen.