Nancy R. Allen (died 1881)

ALLEN, HALL, STEPHENS, LYON, HULL, BRACE

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 2/7/2009 at 08:28:38

Jackson Sentinel, March 3, 1881.
DEATH OF MRS. N. R. ALLEN

A few days ago, Mrs. N. R. Allen of this city, accompanied by her daughter Mrs. Stephens, departed for Philadelphia to be treated for cancer. Upon arriving at the City of Brotherly Love, it was decided by a counsel of physicians to perform an operation and extract the cancer from her breast and the result of this operation proved a death blow to the lady. On Monday morning a telegram was received by Wm. Stephens stating that Mrs. Allen was dying and he immediately took the train for that city. About noon Monday another telegram was received bringing the sad intelligence of Mrs. Allen’s death.

The Iowa Volume of the United States Biographical Dictionary of 1877, has this to say of Mrs. Allen in connection with a sketch of Dr. J. H. Allen: His present wife was the widow of G. D. Lyon of Maquoketa, their union taking place on the 24th of September, 1857, just one year after the burning of the Niagara. Dr. Lyon was her third husband. Her maiden name was Nancy R. Hull and she was the daughter of Ashel Hull, an early settler in Maquoketa. She graduated at Miss Fields Seminary, Erie, Penn. She was first married to P. A. R. Brace, of Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin, a member of the convention that framed the constitution of that state. He left her a widow at twenty-one. She married Mr. Lyon in 1872 and he died of a fever in about two years. She had one daughter by her first husband, now the wife of Wm. Stephens, the Mayor of Maquoketa, one son by her second, Geo. B. Lyon, who has recently completed a very thorough education, and she has one child, Ethan Allen, by her present husband, he is a law student at Michigan.

Mrs. Allen is a woman of fine culture, a vigorous writer and quite active and prominent in the reform movements of the day. The was the first Secretary of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Iowa and was a delegate to the National Temperance Convention which met at Cleveland, Ohio in 1873. She is an officer of the state Woman’s Suffrage Association; is a member of the executive committee of the same character and a member of the Society for advancement of Women. She is a strong believer in human progress and rights without reference to sex and an influential and untiring worker for that end.

Since the above was written Mrs. Allen has visited Washington in behalf of Woman’s Suffrage and spoke before the Central Committee on the suffrage question and was one of the ladies who were appointed delegates and were given seats in the National Republican and Democratic conventions in Chicago and Cincinnati in 1880 and served as a representative and delegate in many state, district and county conventions of minor importance. She was one of the first lady Notary Publics in Iowa. She had a very extended acquaintance of the prominent women of the day at her home in this city. Mrs. Allen had amassed considerable property and combined the elements of a thorough going business woman. In her untimely demise she leaves an estate of no small value to her heirs. She was charitable and gave much aid to the poor and was also a strong supporter and agitator of the temperance question.

Mrs. Allen was born in the state of Vermont and was 56 years of age at the time of her death. It is expected the remains will be brought to Maquoketa the latter part of the week for interment. The bereaved family have the heartfelt sympathy of a large circle of friends who condole with them in the loss of an affectionate wife and kind mother.

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