The Biographical Dictionary of America/Allen, Thomas (financier)

ALLEN, Thomas, financier, born in Pittsfield, Mass., Aug. 29, 1813, son of Jonathan Allen, a captain in the war of 1812, and grandson of Thomas Allen, the "fighting parson" of the revolution. He was graduated from Union college, N.Y., in 1832, and without money or friends he went to New York city, where he was employed as an attorney's clerk at a salary of three hundred dollars per year. He was an occasional contributor to the press, and in September, 1833, became editor of the Family Magazine, a monthly journal. He then aided in compiling a digest of the New York courts from the earliest period, and for his labor received a small but select law library. In 1835 he was admitted to the bar, but devoted his time almost wholly to journalism. On Aug. 16, 1837, he established the Madisonian in Washington, through the columns of which he exerted a powerful political influence. He was appointed to the office of public printer by President Harrison, was active in the campaign of 1840, and was one of those who stood at President Harrison's bedside at his death. In 1842 he retired from politics and removed to St. Louis, Mo., where he married, and began the construction of a railroad, the first of the system that resulted in the Pacific railroad, the great highway of commerce between the East and the West. In 1858 he founded the banking house of Allen, Copp & Nesbitt in St. Louis. He built the Iron Mountain railroad, which opened up a rich mineral region. This road he sold in 1881 to Jay Gould, receiving for it a check for two million dollars. He left many monuments to his public enterprise, among them the Berkshire Athenæum, at Pittsfield, Mass., which he erected at a cost of fifty thousand dollars, and the fireproof Southern hotel at St. Louis, opened May, 1881. In November, 1880, he was elected a representative to the 47th Congress. He died in Washington, D. C., April 8, 1882.