Transcribed:
To Commit Mr. AllenA hearing in the sanity case of A. D. Allen of this city in probate court yesterday brought a verdict of insanity from the examining board called by Judge Jones. Mr. Allen will be taken to one of the state institutions for the insane sometime the latter part of the week.
I am not 100% sure this is the right A. D. Allen, but, sadly, this fits perfectly with the rest of the documentation that I have found. A while back, I found a cemetery record for A.D. Allen at Osawatomie in Miami County, Kansas on Findagrave.com giving the year of his death as 1917. The entry on Findagrave mysteriously disappeared (can't explain it), but fortunately I had recorded the information. An online search revealed that one of the few state mental hospitals - the closest one to Wichita - was at Osawatomie. The only niggling doubt I have comes from the fact that there were other A. D. Allens in Wichita.
On a more positive note, I also found a delightful newspaper story (included at the end of this post) and a cartoon caricature of Augustus on his prize-winning horse, Rex Denmark. Augustus was the president of the Horse Show Association in Wichita.
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| The Wichita Daily Beacon, 1909 |
Below: one of the only two photographs my grandmother had of her father.
Note the hairline, even to the curl above his broad forehead! The nose, chin,
mustache, ears... he is a little older and heavier in the caricature, his eyebrows a
little bushier, and he is wearing glasses, but his identity is unmistakable.
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| This photo was taken about 1900. |
1) A.D. Allen did NOT die in 1904 after all, though his 1st wife Eva (my great grandmother) was listed as a widow in the 1904 City Directory and in the 1910 U.S. Census.
2) The "A. D. Allen" who was the horse-loving subject of at least two published biographical sketches is the same man as the one in my grandmother's photo of her father, though neither of the accounts mentions the existence of his first wife and child.
3) My great grandfather had a second wife named Emma, whom he married in 1905 while his 1st wife was still alive.
4) My grandmother lived in Iowa until she was seven years old, according to facts given in A. D. Allen's biography. (Keokuk, Iowa was right across the river from Hancock County, Illinois, where Augustus was born).
Every new finding creates new questions!
- To what state hospital was A. D. Allen committed in 1917? Osawatomie?
- Where was Emma at the end of Augustus' life? (She is listed as a widow in 1920).
- Why did A. D. Allen have to be legally declared insane by a judge at a court hearing?
- Why did Augustus claim to have been orphaned at a very young age and all alone in the world while his mother and a number of brothers and sisters were all still alive in Illinois? (His mother died in 1896).
Here is the newspaper bio of Augustus:
I love the reporter's sense of humor: "He looks some like ex-Chief of Police George T. Cubbin, only a little more so."
Here is another biography from Genealogy Trails:
ALLEN, AUGUSTUS D.
Augustus D. Allen, who for some years has been actively engaged in the real estate business in Wichita, has two fads. One is that of owning and driving good horses, and the other is that of selling Kansas farms. This latter, however, is a business, and selling Kansas farms nowadays puts a man in the class of the diamond broker or corn king. Mr. Allen is a native of Illinois, he having been born in Hancock county, that state, on March 21, 1865. The lad's parents died when he was small, and he had to make his own way in the world. His education was acquired in the public schools of Carthage, Ill., and in the Gem City Business College, of Quincy, Ill. After leaving school Mr. Allen obtained a position as clerk in a store at Tioga, Ill., and he remained there for seven years, leaving to engage in the mercantile business at Keokuk, Ia., where he remained seven years. He then engaged in the wholesale egg business, in which he remained three years, and then entered the real estate field, selling land in Bureau county, Illinois, until 1900, when he came to Wichita, where for a time he was connected with the Kansas Bureau of Immigration and later with the B. D. Allen Realty Company. About three years ago Mr. Allen started in the real estate business for himself and has since conducted a large business. Mr. Allen is methodical in his affairs and keeps book records of all his business. In nine years of business he brought into Kansas from other states 3,700 people, over 50 per cent of whom remained permanently. Since he was fifteen years old, Mr. Allen has owned every minute of that time some sort of a horse. One of his horses, Midnight Denmark, has been shown in the model class nine times and brought home seven blue ribbons and two reds. Mr. Allen was married in 1905 to Miss Emma Shindler, of Wichita.
(History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas: past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county; Chicago: C.F. Cooper & Co., 1910, Pages 705 & 706)
Note: the birth date in this bio is correct, but the year is wrong. Augustus was actually born on March 21, 1859. In the 1910 Census and in this account, his birth year was given as 1865. To seem younger for his much younger wife, Emma?
I love the reporter's sense of humor: "He looks some like ex-Chief of Police George T. Cubbin, only a little more so."
Here is another biography from Genealogy Trails:
ALLEN, AUGUSTUS D.
Augustus D. Allen, who for some years has been actively engaged in the real estate business in Wichita, has two fads. One is that of owning and driving good horses, and the other is that of selling Kansas farms. This latter, however, is a business, and selling Kansas farms nowadays puts a man in the class of the diamond broker or corn king. Mr. Allen is a native of Illinois, he having been born in Hancock county, that state, on March 21, 1865. The lad's parents died when he was small, and he had to make his own way in the world. His education was acquired in the public schools of Carthage, Ill., and in the Gem City Business College, of Quincy, Ill. After leaving school Mr. Allen obtained a position as clerk in a store at Tioga, Ill., and he remained there for seven years, leaving to engage in the mercantile business at Keokuk, Ia., where he remained seven years. He then engaged in the wholesale egg business, in which he remained three years, and then entered the real estate field, selling land in Bureau county, Illinois, until 1900, when he came to Wichita, where for a time he was connected with the Kansas Bureau of Immigration and later with the B. D. Allen Realty Company. About three years ago Mr. Allen started in the real estate business for himself and has since conducted a large business. Mr. Allen is methodical in his affairs and keeps book records of all his business. In nine years of business he brought into Kansas from other states 3,700 people, over 50 per cent of whom remained permanently. Since he was fifteen years old, Mr. Allen has owned every minute of that time some sort of a horse. One of his horses, Midnight Denmark, has been shown in the model class nine times and brought home seven blue ribbons and two reds. Mr. Allen was married in 1905 to Miss Emma Shindler, of Wichita.
(History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas: past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county; Chicago: C.F. Cooper & Co., 1910, Pages 705 & 706)
Note: the birth date in this bio is correct, but the year is wrong. Augustus was actually born on March 21, 1859. In the 1910 Census and in this account, his birth year was given as 1865. To seem younger for his much younger wife, Emma?
