Allen Migration Westward and Back Again

Sometimes, in order to understand how and why things happened the way they did, you have to study a map.  You also need to have handy a timeline of evolutionary changes of the United States. The United States changed boundaries so many times, it gets confusing to identify locations.  For instance, Connecticut at one time encompassed what is now the state of Ohio. Lunenburg County once included almost all of southside Virginia but is now only a tiny portion of its original area.  By looking at a map, I wanted to make sense of the way my maternal grandmother's family moved across the United States and back.

The Allen family's movements seemed random and scattered until I mapped them. Family members could reside in three different states, yet on the map it can easily be seen that some of the locations are actually adjacent. The family's journey started in Virginia, moved westward in a logical pattern, and circled back again to Virginia.

Here is a brief summary of the Allen family migration using the places indicated on the map:

The Allens settled in New Kent County, Virginia in the 1600's. I've traced the family back to Robert Allen who was born in 1680.  His father was probably born in England. We are descended from Robert Allen's son Robert through his son William.**

William Allen (b. 1724) moved to Mecklenburg County. The Allens populated southside Virginia, spreading south and west from there.

William's grandson John Watson Allen (b. abt 1769) raised his family in Pittsylvania County, Virginia; later crossing the mountains and settling in Mason County, Kentucky.  John's brother James purchased land in Lawrenceville, Ohio across the river. *

Historical Note: the Cumberland Gap was discovered in 1750. Daniel Boone began exploring Kentucky in 1775. By 1790, the path of migration was established; the "Wilderness Road" was traveled by wagons. Kentucky was admitted to the Union in 1792 (15th State). A possible motivation for the move from Virginia to Kentucky was a widespread crop failure (tobacco?), 1800-1830. The main waterways were the Kentucky River and the Ohio River. Kenton County, KY, was located on the Ohio River across from present day Cincinnati, OH. 

John's son, Robert Scott Allen (b. 1797), lived nearby in Kenton County, Kentucky, moving westward from there to Hancock County, Illinois, where my great grandfather Augustus was born. Robert married Elizabeth Highland from Ohio, in present-day Cincinnati.

Augustus Allen (b. 1859) married Eva Bosworth from Littleton, Illinois.  They moved to Keokuk, Iowa in 1893 shortly after the birth of their daughter Ethelyn.

In 1900, he moved his family to Wichita, Kansas, perhaps because of the real estate boom.

Around 1905, Augustus abandoned his wife Eva, and she was sent to an insane asylum in Woodward Oklahoma. His 10 or 11 year old daughter Ethelyn was sent to a boarding school in Paris, Texas. It seems that Augustus remarried and eventually moved to Dallas, TX, finally disappearing about 1917.

Sometime between 1910 and 1916, my grandmother changed her name from Ethelyn to Teresa Marie Allen. After graduating from nursing school in 1919, she worked for a time in Oklahoma City.

Teresa Allen moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she met and married my grandfather, Horace Calvin Crofford in 1926. They lived in Waukegan near his family, and raised two children.

In search of employment, the family moved to Norfolk, Virginia in 1942, where their daughter Virginia met my father, John Beverly Zaun.

Norfolk is about an hour and a half drive from New Kent County where my grandmother's history began.

Full circle.

*Some of the Allen family settled in Montgomery County in NW Tennessee just outside of Nashville (not marked on the map).  John Watson Allen's mother, Sarah Neblett Allen, remarried and lived there with several Allens and members of the Neblett family.

**Postscript, May 2016:  Since this writing, I have found out that our link to the New Kent Allens is unverified. An Allen family genealogist looked at my DNA results and said that my DNA matches contain errors in their family trees. She found that my DNA results show links to Allen families originating in New England (which is true - the Wandell family married into the Allen family in New England).  She recommended that I begin my search by building a private Allen family tree for the Kentucky Allens, which is the last proven residence of my 2X great grandfather, Robert S. Allen. A History of Hancock County, in a biography of my grandmother's 1st cousin, Rose Spitler Scofield, says that family lore tells of John Watson Allen's childhood relationship with his cousin, Ethan Allen. The family lore could have mistakenly the "Revolutionary War Hero" with Jack Jouette, who was indeed connected to the Allens of Virginia.