Benjamin William Allen (1853 - 1918)

Born 25 Mar 1853 in Wexford, Ireland

Ancestors

Husband of Harriette (Waters) Allen — married 7 Feb 1881 in St. George's Church, Dublin, Ireland

Descendants

Died 14 Oct 1918 at age 65 in Dublin, Ireland

Biography

None of Ben's siblings appear in the St. Iberius Church registers; he appears to have been born between two major gaps in these records.

According to an 1885 business directory, Ben worked as an insurance agent of Main Street in Wexford, Ireland before he went to work as a Manager for the Bank of Ireland.

The Bank of Ireland--Mountmellick?--was located in Tipperary. Ben's grandson John A. Allen told me that bank managers maintained flats on the third floor of this building. The bank offices were on the first floor and the kitchens in the basement. Each manager was also given a servant, but B.W. never made enough money to properly educate his sons. This also suggests that he had inherited nothing from his father, a man who had several sons to finance.

In later life, both Benjamin and a cousin became very interested in the family history. His wife Harriet saved his papers and bought them to Canada when she immigrated. Eventually Ben's grandson, John Annesley Allen, entrusted these papers to me.

There is no marriage portrait of Ben and Harry, but several wonderful pictures have survived of their family, depicting seven of the eight children who were born in as many years. Ben is always a dark bearded, pleasant-faced man; Harry is a plain, but aristocratic looking woman with her legacy of thin lips and frizzy hair and the children are inevitably solemn.

Both parents appear to have been devoted to their children and devastated by their losses. Ivy Ruth died before the age of two in the same room she was born in. Her parents erected a large monument to her in Tipperary. Much later, two of the boys were killed in action, Arthur Havilland in Oct 1917 and John de Renzi in August 1918.

His son's military service papers indicate that Ben was already insane, but his descendants believed that these cataclysmic events tipped the scales.

Ben was an Purcell inmate in Bloomfield, Dublin when he died of "acute melancholia." His wife Harry was concerned enough about her remaining children and grandchildren inheriting Ben's disease, to request an autopsy. She was relieved to find out that Ben had died of "meningitis" and that his condition would not affect future generations.

It is doubtful that Ben's diagnosis was meningitis as we currently understand it. Neither the onset of his disease or his demise was sudden or swift. His deterioration appears to have been rather slow, and much more characteristic of Alzheimer's, or possibly encephalitis. Either of these conditions might lead to brain cell losses and personality changes.

His early retirement also points to a slow deterioration. He was barely 51 and considering the difficulties his sons faced educating themselves, he still needed money for a growing family who ranged in age from 13 to 22. His co-workers presented him with a large, silver tray and tea service, engraved with these words: "To Benjamin W. Allen Esq., by his friends in Mountmellick & District as a token of their esteem & good wishes May 1904." Each silver piece was also stamped with Ben's Allen crest, a lion holding a rudder & bearing the words "Triumpho morte tam vita" (or "I triumph in death as in life.").

After Ben's death, his wife Harry left for the New World, accompanied by her oldest daughter, May, a girl who never married. They liquidated their few assets to do so, and May started looking for work, first in Winnipeg, Manitoba, although they eventually settled in Toronto.

Most of Harry's children had already immigrated by the year 1919. Her oldest son, Maurice, a marine engineer, was probably farming unsuccessfully in Alberta at the time, although he also ended up in Ontario. Her youngest son, Loftus, who had abandoned his training for the Anglican ministry at Trinity College due to lack of funding, was working as a chartered accountant in Toronto, Ontario. Her second daughter, Isabella, must have been well established in Maryland, USA with Thomas Thomas Hall & three of their four children. Only one daughter, Eva Maude, remained behind in Ireland.

Ben and Harry's children were not as prolific as their parents. Only the second child, Isabella and the last child, Loftus, ever married. Isabella had four children, and Loftus had three, and the seven of these grandchildren became Harry's world. She is buried in Toronto, Canada on the other side of the world from her husband Ben. Her children Richard "Maurice" and May are buried with her.

Sources

Death record: Here

1911 census: Here

1901 census: Here