Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Susan B. Allen Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

SUSAN B. ALLEN

(transcribed by Sheryl McClure)

Susan B. Allen, in whose beloved memory her son, Frank S. Allen contributed a fortune to make possible the great Susan B. Allen Memorial Hospital, was a native of New England and came of a long line of fine old Anglo-Saxon and Colonial American stock.

Mrs. Allen was the daughter of Arnold Boyden, also a native New Englander and who gave his life for his country while serving with the American army in Mexico, in 1848. Her mother was Susan (Mansfield) Boyden, also born in New England. Mrs. Allen was born in Boston, December 20, 1831. Her death occurred September 11, 1924, in the Allen home, on the present hospital site and in which home she had lived for nearly a half century—the house has been remodeled into one of the nurses homes, also gifts of her son and a part of the $200,000 Memorial Hospital plant.

Mrs. Allen became the wife of Lewis E. Allen, of Boston, in 1847, just a year before the death of her soldier-father on the historic plains of Otumba. He was a merchant, and, in the 1850's, established a store in New Orleans, Louisiana. He lost his life in October, 1866, while enroute home from a business trip, being one of those lost at sea when the illfated steamer, Evening Star, New York to New Orleans, went down in a storm off the Carolina coast.

Following the death of Mr. Allen, Mrs. Allen continued to live for a time in New Orleans, then removed to Mason City, Illinois, where many of her relatives then were living, including Daniel Boyden, a brother, who later became one of El Dorado's best known business men, a personal friend and intimate associate of Nathan Frank Frazier, Gen. Alfred W. Ellet, Alvah Shelden, Dr. Allen White and other citizens of El Dorado of a generation ago. Mr. Boyden, having settled in El Dorado at an earlier date persuaded his sister, Mrs. Allen, and her son, Frank S. Allen, then a young man, twenty-two years of age, to join him. The mother and son arrived in 1881, fifty-four years ago.

From that date to the time of her death, Mrs. Allen constantly was high in the esteem and the love of her friends and neighbors. She was active in Episcopal church work here and virtually built and for years generously helped to maintain that organization. She was a member of the Towanda Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star; and was a member of a Boston Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Her charity and welfare work was wise and constant and generous. Few women, even in this section, have become more meritedly notable for kindliness and practical and substantial sympathy for less fortunate friends or any one in distress.

But with all her goodly work, stated an article, published recently in The El Dorado Times, her greatest achievement and one that is redounding to the eternal benefit of the people of this city and county, was the perfect manner in which she reared her son, Frank S. Allen. The affection between the mother and the son was one of the most sincere in the annals of this splendid old town. The kindliness, gentleness, the sympathetic understanding and commonsense generosity of the mother has been handed down to the son, as is gloriously manifest in the great hospital which was built in loving memory and which will perpetuate forever the sainted name of Susan B. Allen, one of El Dorado's noblest women.