Bastrop, Bastrop County
Resident of Bastrop County, 1857-1863. Wife of Col. Robert Thomas Pritchard Allen (1812-1888), graduate of West Point, Civil engineer, mathematics professor, Methodist preacher, U. S. mail agent and co-publisher "Pacific News," San Francisco, 1849-1850; founder and commandant of Kentucky Military Institute and of Bastrop Military Institute. Their family visitors from time to time in Bastrop included Governor Sam Houston, whose son, Sam Junior, was a B.M.I. cadet. Mrs. Allen, during the Civil War, was an angel of mercy to prisoners at Camp Ford, Tyler, where her husband, at that time colonel of the 17th Texas Infantry, was commandant, 1863-1864. She nursed the ill, consoled the homesick, cheered the despondent, attended church services with the prisoners; she was so much esteemed and loved that one of the Federals wrote a poem in her honor. After the war, returned with her husband to state of Kentucky. There Col. Allen resumed operation of Kentucky Military Institute. His brother-in-law, Jay Cooke, of Philadelphia, who had won international fame as the United States' financier for the Civil War, backed Allen and K. M. I. until his 1873 business failure known as the Jay Cooke Money Panic. (1965)