Guide to the William Allen Family Papers, 1805-1970, undated
William Allen Family Papers, George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine.
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William Allen (1784-1868) was a Congregational minister, author, and college president. A graduate of Harvard (1802), he served as regent there from 1804 to 1810, when he took over his father's parish in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In 1817 he became president of the short-lived Dartmouth University, leaving Dartmouth for Bowdoin College when the University was dissolved.
Allen became Bowdoin's third president, serving, with one interruption, from 1820 to 1839. He worked to establish the Medical School of Maine and to lead the College through the formation of the new state of Maine in 1820. Information on Allen's tenure is available in the William Allen Administrative Records. He retired to Northampton, Massachusetts in 1839.
Allen married Maria Malleville Wheelock, daughter of Dartmouth College president John Wheelock, in 1812; the couple had eight children. Maria M. Allen died in 1828. In 1831, Allen married Sarah Johnson.
Allen's papers are supplemented by his published writings, among them three editions of the American Biographical Dictionary, Junius Unmasked, and many sermons and theological works.
Correspondence, chiefly letters written by William Allen from Brunswick or Northampton, and letters to Allen's daughter, Elizabeth L. Allen, from cousins and friends. Also includes biographical material, images of William Allen, newspaper clippings, and a thimble belonging to African-American Phebe Ann Jacobs (formerly enslaved to Allen's wife Maria Wheelock; servant to the Allen family).
For related materials, see the William Allen Administrative Records.
Letters by William Allen, 1805-1860, most written from Brunswick or Northampton. Correspondents include college presidents Henry Davis of Middlebury College and Benjamin Hale (Bowdoin 1820) of Geneva College (now Hobart and William Smith Colleges) as well as Bowdoin colleagues, professor Nehemiah Cleaveland and trustee Reuel Williams. Brief biographical records, images of Allen, and a thimble belonging to African-American Phebe Ann Jacobs (formerly enslaved to Allen's wife Maria Wheelock; servant to the Allen family) are also included.
Arranged alphabetically.
Biographical material, 1853, n.d.
Correspondence - alphabetical and chronological list
Correspondence, 1805-1827
Correspondence, 1828-1862
Images, n.d.
Newspaper clippings, 1822-1970
Thimble belonging to Phebe Ann Jacobs (formerly enslaved to Maria Wheelock; servant to the Allen family), with accompanying papers.
Allen family correspondence, principally personal letters to William Allen's daughters, Elizabeth L., Charlotte, and Clara. The bulk of the letters are to Elizabeth L. Allen, 1836-1839, from cousins and friends. Correspondents include Aurelia and Mary Dwight, Susan Brewster, and Caroline Jordon.
Arranged chronologically.
1836-1838
1839, n.d.