My Genealogy Hound

Below is a family biography included in the book,  Biographical Souvenir of the Counties of Buffalo, Kearney, Phelps, Harlan and Franklin, Nebraska published in 1890 by F. A. Battey & Company.  These biographies are valuable for genealogy research in discovering missing ancestors or filling in the details of a family tree. Family biographies often include far more information than can be found in a census record or obituary.  Details will vary with each biography but will often include the date and place of birth, parent names including mothers' maiden name, name of wife including maiden name, her parents' names, name of children (including spouses if married), former places of residence, occupation details, military service, church and social organization affiliations, and more.  There are often ancestry details included that cannot be found in any other type of genealogical record.

* * * *

L. E. ALLEN, the present sheriff of Harlan county, located in the county in 1877, and, with possibly one exception, there is not another man in the county who has been more frequently honored with office than he has. He was elected to a township office the same year he settled, and he has had something to do with the administration of township or county affairs in one official capacity or another almost continuously since. To complete the record of Harlan county’s list of public officials, we give an outline of his career.

L. E. Allen was born in Elmira, N. Y., and reared there to the age of fourteen, when he went into the Union army, enlisting in the Seventy-sixth New York infantry; but, being too young to bear arms, was assigned to duty in the quartermaster’s department, where he served during the entire war. His regiment made a splendid record for gallant conduct, and it will not be out of place to mention here a few general facts connected with its history as showing amid what scenes and experiences the subject of this sketch spent some of the earlier years of his life. The Seventy-sixth was recruited from Cortland and Otsego counties in 1861 and arrived at Washington in February, 1862. It was assigned to Doubleday’s brigade. Hatch’s division, and saw its first service at the first Manassas. Beginning with that engagement it participated in fifteen of the bloodiest battles fought in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland, losing in killed, and wounded six hundred and fifty-four, out of an enlistment of one thousand four hundred and ninety-one men. It sustained its greatest casualties at Gettysburg, where it lost thirty-two killed, one hundred and thirty-two wounded and seventy missing, out of twenty-seven officers and three hundred and forty-eight men, whom it took into the fight. Its losses at the Wilderness were also heavy, as well as at Spottsylvania and Petersburg. It served out its full term of enlistment, being mustered out in January, 1865. Those who re-enlisted and the recruits were then placed in the One Hundred and Seventy-sixth New York and served till the surrender.

At the close of the war Mr. Allen returned for a short time to Elmira, N. Y., but, having been reared in the family of a stranger, his parents having died when he was young, he had no connections or associations to hold him there, and in the fall of 1866 he started West to see what there was in store for him in the land of plenty and promise. He stopped at Indianapolis, Ind., for something over two years, during which time he was variously engaged, and then, in the spring of 1869, he took up the line of travel again towards the West and pulled up in Wyoming Territory, that year, where he remained for some time. He came, in May, 1875, to the Republican valley counties of Nebraska and spent two or three years along the valley and across the line in Kansas, and finally returned, in 1877, and located permanently in Harlan county, since which time he has continued to live there. He took a homestead on Sappa creek in the southwest part of the county, a beautiful piece of land which he improved and where he lived till he sold it two years later, buying other land in the same vicinity, on which he moved Mr. Allen was engaged in farming and sheep and cattle raising for some years. He was unfortunate in his ventures with sheep and lost heavily, but at farming he was successful and continued at that till 1887, when he moved into Alma to assume the duties of the office of sheriff, to which he was that year elected. Mr. Allen’s first public office in the county was justice of the peace of Sappa township. In the fall of 1883 he was nominated by his neighbors and friends in Sappa township, for county commissioner and township supervisor — the former if the commissioner’s system continued and the latter if the supervisor system was adopted by the vote at that election. He was elected as both, but, the latter system being adopted, he qualified as supervisor. He served one year as supervisor of Sappa township, was then elected chairman of the board, and served as such for the three following years. He was elected sheriff of the county at the November election in 1887, served out his term, and was re-elected in November, 1889. He is a stanch republican and has always been elected on the republican ticket. In each of his races for the sheriff’s office he had opposition, the race being hotly contested the first time. In this race were three other candidates besides Mr. Allen, who was the regular republican nominee. These were Patrick Gibbon, the democratic nominee, W. F. Dale, prohibitionist; and Charles H. Brown, who ran on an independent ticket. Mr. Allen was elected by thirty-seven votes. In the election of 1889 he was opposed by J. W. Edwards, the prohibitionist candidate, and W. H. Kellogg, the democratic nominee. He was elected over them by about one thousand one hundred votes, having something of a walk over.

Mr. Allen is a popular man and deservedly so, for he is a competent business man, an honest and faithful officer, and a kind and accommodating gentleman. He gives to the duties of his office his undivided attention, and it is but stating the simple truth to say that his office is administered with wisdom, discretion and with faithful exactitude. The majority given him at his last election may be taken as some evidence of the satisfaction with which his official conduct has been received by the citizens of the county. Could he have been as fortunate in the management of his own personal affairs as he has been in the management of those of the public which have been entrusted to him, he would have been able to retire long before this from the public service and from active affairs generally. It may be, however, that in the management of the public’s interests he has been more circumspect than in the management of his own, for his official conduct has been marked not only by the greatest diligence but by the most scrupulous care and caution.

Mr. Allen married in February, 1877, just prior to taking up his residence in Harlan county, so that his wife is also one of the early settlers of the county, shared with him his labors in the earlier years, and is therefore deserving of this mention as one of the women who braved the hardships and privations incident to those times. At time of her marriage she was a resident of Rock Island county, Ill., her parents having moved there from western Pennsylvania some years previous. She was born in Westmoreland county, Pa., and was reared there to young womanhood. She bore the maiden name of Anna Brady, and was a daughter of James Brady, a descendant of an old Pennsylvania pioneer family, distinguished in the early annals of the country as frontiersmen and Indian fighters.

Mr. Allen is devoted to his home and family, being of a quiet turn of mind and decidedly domestic tastes. He has a large circle of friends, and finds, also, not the least of his enjoyments in mingling with them. He probably knows as many men in Harlan county as any other man in it, and has for them all and for the stranger who comes his way a pleasant greeting and a hearty grasp of the hand.

* * * *

This family biography is one of the numerous biographies included in the book, Biographical Souvenir of the Counties of Buffalo, Kearney, Phelps, Harlan and Franklin, Nebraska published in 1890 by F. A. Battey & Company. 

View additional Harlan County, Nebraska family biographies here: Harlan County, Nebraska Biographies

View a historic 1912 map of Harlan County, Nebraska

View family biographies for other states and counties

Use the links at the top right of this page to search or browse thousands of other family biographies.