Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/39

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ALLEN
17
ALLEN

partment of the University; 1885 saw him emeritus professor of the institutes of medicine, and in 1891 he once more assumed the chair of comparative anatomy and zoology which he held until 1896. He was thus connected with the University of Pennsylvania as a teacher for over thirty years. Among other scientific societies to which he belonged may be mentioned the Natural History Society of Boston, the Philadelphia Pathological Society, the Washington Biological Society, the Association of American Anatomists, of which he was president from 1891–1893, and the Anthropomorphic Society, of which he became president in 1891.

He died suddenly November 14, 1897.

A list of his work is in Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Session of the Association of American Anatomists held in Ithaca, December, 1897.

Harrison Allen, by Burt G. Wilder. Proceedings of the Association of American Anatomists, December. 1897. A brief biography with portrait and bibliography.
Dr. Allen's Contributions to Anthropology, by D. G. Brinton. Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Arts and Science, December 31, 1897.
Dr Allen's Zoological Work, by S. N. Rhoads, same proceedings.
Biographical notes of Harrison Allen and George Henry Horn, same proceedings.

Allen, Jonathan Adams (1787–1848)

Dr. Jonathan Adams Allen was a physician and surgeon of wide reputation in Middlebury, Vermont, from 1820 to the time of his death. He was more than a physician and surgeon; he was a well known botanist, geologist and chemist, besides being a mail of high personal character and a devout Christian.

Dr. Allen was born at Holliston, Massachusetts, Nov. 17, 1787. His father. Amos Allen, was of Welsh descent, his mother was a daughter of Abel Smith and grand-daughter of Jonathan Adams of Medway. This Jonathan Adams had a narrow escape in early childhood, when his mother was killed by the Indians and he was left as dead, after his head had been dashed against a stone. From him. Dr. Jonathan Adams Allen received his name—indeed he had been promised a sheep with the name, but when his parents moved to Vermont in 1788, he was given a hatchet instead.

After the family removed to Newfane, Vt., young Jonathan, during intervals of work on the farm, attended the common schools. He seems to have been a natural student and satisfied his taste for books by purchasing these from the proceeds of the furs he was enabled to secure by trapping and hunting. On his twenty-first birthday he started out with a bundle to seek his fortune. He taught school in West Townshend and studied Latin with the minister. Deciding to study medicine, he placed himself under the tuition of Dr. Paul Wheeler of Wardsboro. He attended lectures at Dartmouth under Dr. Nathan Smith and graduated from that institution August 24, 1814, and then returned to Wardsboro, practised with Dr. Wheeler, his instructor, for two years, and moved to Brattleboro in August, 1816.

January 1, 1815, he married Betsy Cheney of Jamaica, Vt. By her he had four children, the second being Charles Linnaeus, (q.v.) and the fourth, Jonathan Adams, (q.v.) professor of the principles and practice of medicine in Rush Medical College, Chicago, for thirty-one years. Betsy Cheney Allen died March 24, 1826, and Dr. Allen married for his second wife, Huldah R. Dygert, January 24, 1827. They had one child who died in early life.

Huldah Dygert died January 1, 1829, and he married for his third wife, Philinda Ransom, June 9, 1829. They had no children and she died Sept. 20, 1847.

Dr. Allen was surgeon of a regiment raised near the end of the war of 1812, which, on account of the close of the war, was disbanded without seeing service. In the spring of 1822 he moved from Brattleboro to Middlebury, where he was appointed a member of the corporation of the Vermont Academy of Medicine, a medical college situated at Castleton, Vt., and having a "conventional connection" with Middlebury College, the latter institution conferring the degrees. He also at this time was appointed professor of materia medica and pharmacy in the Castleton institution. In 1827, with his second wife, Huldah Dygert, and his four children, he moved to Herkimer, New York.

Here Mrs. Allen died, five days after the birth of her son, Amos Dygert. Thereupon, because his property, with the exception of a horse, was in Vermont, Dr. Allen determined to return there. In an old crate, which had been used for packing crockery, placed upon two saplings for runners, he placed his four older children (presumably leaving the baby with relatives in Herkimer) and started for Middlebury on foot, leading the horse hitched to the improvised sleigh.

Dr. Allen was appointed professor of materia medica and pharmacy in the Vermont Academy of Medicine in 1822, a position which he held for seven years. He also de-