The following was sent to me by Patti Unruh in October of 2002 Patti lives in Sedgwick, KS. She is an Allen descendant - and an excellent, hard-working Allen researcher.
Note: Patti included in her mailing to me information from the Allen Family Bible and copies of several photographs of varied types. She explained that some of the photos were of unknown subjects and it was her hope that identities may someday be established. If anyone can help, please write to this website host.
(by Shirley Farone, website host).
Patti Unruh’s letter and the scrapbook article follow:
“I found this article in a Sedgwick Library scrapbook - undated. Taken from the Sedgwick Pantagraph (city paper), printed I believe - sometime in the 1930’s or 1940’s.
Also I can note that the blacksmith Mr. Poett referred to in this article was somehow related to Rhoda Quiett, as she had sisters with the married name, Poett. My grandmother Frances “Fannie” Allen Kennedy, had a cedar chest made for all the grand-daughters when they graduated from high school. In 1973 I asked her if, instead of a cedar chest, I could have the camel-back trunk that Amasa Nelson Allen brought to Kansas from Michigan. I still have that wonderful old trunk Amasa refers to in this article. In that trunk were the photos of his mother and father, Thaddeus Houghton Allen and Mary Ann Otis, and their house in Michigan. Several of the “unknown” Allen photos were also in the trunk, so I must assume that they are Allen’s that were still in Michigan when Amasa came to Kansas. - Patti Unruh.
Grandpa Allen Writes
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Dear Pantagraph friends:
Soon after supper on March 1, 1876, my brother-in-law Nick Ditmere and I left Port Huron Michigan for Kansas. We could not buy a ticket direct to Sedgwick, so after riding second class (in the smoking car) and buying another ticket from Newton to Sedgwick for 60 cents we arrived here about midnight March 3. A Mr. Bell, for whom the Bell School is named, came on the same train. There was one combination car i.e., baggage, mail and express in the one end and passengers in the other and one coach on the train.
A few days after we came, the Hobbles and Amos Wilson got here.
We went to a Mr. Merrill’s for the night. The house stood about where Mr. Bruington lives. I came only to see what the country was like but when I learned that I could take 2 ponies, break an acre of land and raise a crop on it in 12 months, decided it was better than several men spending a few months clearing a small piece of timber and then years before it was reall ready to cultivate.
I still have the trunk I brought with me. On January 31, 1878 Miss Rhoda Greenleaf Quiett and I were married. We went directly to our home. Soon after I came I bought a relinquishment of a Mr. Ridley and had moved the one room across the slough and had lathed and plastered it.
The Quietts lived where the Eugene Smith house now is.
A Mr. Poett, a blacksmith, lived about where Harrison Lowman now lives, at Putnam. He used to walk down the railroad each day and back home at night after working at blacksmithing all day in Sedgwick. He would pick up my plow shears, carry them to town, sharpen them and return them, all for 15 cents each shear.
There were several apple trees on the place too. A Maiden Blush Early Harvest and Snow Apple which still bore when I left the farm in 1918. One unusual thing about the spring of 1878. It was not unusual to find from 3 to 5 inches of snow on the ground in the morning but it would be melted before night and that through February and March I believe we had the earliest summer that year we ever had. - Amasa N. Allen.
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