Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/72

50 their first vessel, made her first voyage in 1855. During the Crimean war two of the company's steamers were employed as transport ships, between Portsmouth and Marseilles and the Levant, by Great Britain and France and in 1874 two were employed in a similar service between England and the western coast of Africa. The Allan line of royal mail steamships has contributed greatly to the prosperity of Montreal and of Canadian commerce. Sir Hugh was a director of the Montreal telegraph company, the Montreal warehousing company, the merchants' bank of Canada, the Mulgrave gold mining company, and for a short time of the Pacific railway. His name gained a place in the political history of Canada through his alleged questionable connection with the "Pacific Scandal." He was knighted in 1871, as Sir Hugh Allan of Ravenscraig, in recognition of his hospitality to the prince of Wales, and his services to Canadian and British commerce. He had a beautiful residence at Ravenscraig, Montreal, and a villa at Belmere, on Lake Memphremagog.

ALLAN, John, soldier, b. at the castle of Edinburgh, Scotland, VS Jan., 1746; d. in Lubec, Me., 7 Feb., 1805. His father was a retired British officer, who emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1749. John was brought up in agricultural and mercantile pursuits. He became a justice of the peace, and then clerk of the supreme court, and from 1770 to 1776 was a member of the provincial assembly. When the American colonies engaged in the struggle for independence he gave them active and efficient aid, securing the alliance of the Indian tribes of that region. Congress nominated him superintendent of the eastern Indians, and gave him a colonel's commission in January, 1777, and with his Indians he protected the otherwise exposed line of the northeastern frontier. The Nova Scotian authorities offered a price for his apprehension, while his house was burned and his wife thrown into prison. In 1784 Col. Allan settled in Maine. The government of Massachusetts in 1792 granted him a tract of 22,000 acres, on which the town of Whiting now stands, and in 1801 congress gave him 2,000 acres in Ohio in compensation for the losses he sustained for the patriot cause.

ALLAN, John, antiquarian, b. in Kilbirnie, Ayrshire, Scotland, 26 Feb., 1777 ; d. in New York, 19 Nov., 1863. His father was a tenant farmer, and sent his son to a grammar school. After leaving school he worked on the farm, but, finding this labor uncongenial, he emigrated to New York in 1794, secured employment as a clerk or book-keeper, and speedily acquired a high reputation for industry and trustworthiness. He was book-keeper to Rich & Distrow, merchant tailors, for many years, and to his clerkship he added also the business of commission agent, and was at one time much employed as a house agent and collector of rents. By these various employments he secured a moderate independence. He married early in life, and occupied for a quarter of a century a house in Pearl st. opposite Centre, the site of which is now part of the public street. In 1837 he removed to 17 Vandewater st., where he resided until his death, and there found leisure for gratifying his taste for antiquarian research. In a room at his house his valuable and unique collection of pictures, books, autographs, and rare and curious articles, especially attractive to the antiquary and virtuoso, was frequently viewed by visitors to the city and by others. In this room, so garnished, he died. Mr. Allan's collection was sold at auction a short time after his death, and the total receipts amounted to $87,689.26. At that time but one of his children, a Mrs. Stewart, was living, and he had appointed her sole executrix of his estate. One of Mr. Allan's hobbies was a fancy for snuff-boxes, of which he had gathered a large and valuable collection. Another was illustrating such works as Washington's Life and Burns's Poems, which brought extremely high prices at his celebrated sale. See Duyckinck's "Memorial of John Allan," issued by the Bradford Club (New York, 1864).

ALLEN, Alexander Viets Griswold, author, b. in Otis, Mass., 4 May, 1841. He was graduated at Kenyon college in 1862, and at Andover theological seminary in 1865, was ordained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal church in that year, and in 1867 became professor of church history in the Episcopalian divinity school at Cambridge. He has published "The Greek Theology, and the Renaissance of the Nineteenth Century," constituting the Bohlen lectures for 1884, and "Continuity of Christian Thought" (1884).

ALLEN, Andrew, b. in Philadelphia in 1740; d. in London, Eng., 7 March, 1825. He received a classical education, studied law with his father, William Allen, chief justice of Pennsylvania, was admitted to the bar, and practised in Philadelphia. He was appointed attorney-general in 1766, became a member of the Philadelphia committee of safety, was one of the committee of three appointed by the colonial congress to go to New York and advise with the council of safety of the colony and with Gen. Lee respecting the immediate defence of the city of New York, and was a strong advocate for congressional measures, until the royalist army had taken New York and compelled Washington, with the broken remains -of his troops, to cross the Delaware. Terrified by the position of affairs, he went into the British lines, took the oaths of allegiance to the king, renouncing those he had taken to congress, and went to England. As a result, he was attainted and his landed estate forfeited under the confiscation act. On his return to England he was compensated with a pension by the British government of £400 per annum.

ALLEN, Benjamin, clergyman, b. in Hudson, N. Y., 29 Sept., 1789 ; d. at. sea, 13 Jan., 1829. He was educated a Presbyterian, but united with the Episcopal church and became a lay reader, laboring among the colored people of Charleston, Va.; then a deacon, and in 1818 a priest. He published in 1815 the weekly "Layman's Magazine," and in 1820 an abridgment of Burnet's "History of the Reformation." In 1821 he was chosen rector of St. Paul's church, Philadelphia. In 1827 he established a printing-house for the publication of tracts and printing of prayer-books. He published "Christ and Him Crucified." and "Living Manners," a tale (1822); "History of the Church of