Benjamin Allen, Sr.
b. July 15, 1761 Rehoboth, MA d. September 9, 1824 Hudson, NY
Revolutionary Service: served Berkshire Co., MA militia under Captain Enos Parker; Colonel Benjamin Symond, in all-Berkshire Regiment; and Captain Peter Porter in General Fellows’ Brigade
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Lives Cut Short and his Sons the Pastors
There is no record of when Allen came to Hudson but he and his wife Mary Rawson Allen (1763-1801) had six children. Three children died in their first year including their daughter Sarah Allen (May 13, 1792 - May 13, 1792) who died before she was a day old. Only two sons survived to adulthood. The names of all their children are on each of their tombstones.
The two sons who lived in adulthood became reverends: Benjamin Allen, Jr. and Thomas G. Allen. As a child, Benjamin Jr. worked at his father’s store and, when it closed, continued at Marchal Jenkins & Sons for room and board. As evidenced in his brother Thomas’s Memoir of the Rev. Benjamin Allen, late rector of St. Paul's Church, Philadelphia, Benjamin was quite religious even as a young child. Thomas also recalled, in his brother’s biography, the tribulations of his mother who died at 37 from a pulmonary disease.
This was a family that met a great deal of tragedy. Many of the tombstones of this time are etched with the dates of young children dying of diseases that are now preventable; each one was a tragedy for that family.
Benjamin under a nom de plume, Osander, wrote Miscellaneous Poems, On Moral and Religious Subjects including the poem below:
Benjamin Allen, Sr’s Grave,
Section 1B, Hudson Cemetery
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Additional Resources:
Request for Pension due to Benjamin Allen, Sr. (Links to PDF)
Benjamin and Henry Plattner are requesting pensions and are appointing an attorney. Allen is verifying (signed in the presence of...) for Christopher Suffet of Columbia County that he was in the levy of the 9th regiment of service due 2 pounds 8 shillings January 8, 1791.
Abstract from the Revolutionary War Accounts and Claims (Series A0200), from New York in the Revolution as Colony and State, 3d ed., 2 vols. (Albany: 1904).