And
then there was Uncle Jack!
|
Samuel
R. Allen Samuel
R. Allen probably arrived in Hardin County, Tennessee penniless.
Very little is known about Samuel’s childhood.
Born August 16, 1830 somewhere in Kentucky, Samuel was reared by his
grandmother until around six years of age.
Samuel remembered his father, a native Kentuckian, was a stone mason. Sometime after he turned six, he was “taken home” by a
Mrs. Banks and remembered they traveled for a bout a year. Samuel traveled from the Chattahoochie River in Georgia to
Kingston, Tennessee; from there on a flatboat on the Tennessee River to
Limestone Creek, Alabama. It was
there, around 1840, he met Shep Thacker and returned with Mr. Thacker to Hardin
County, Tennessee. In
September 1855 Samuel married Harriet Whitlow, the daughter of Milton and Sarah
Wade Whitlow. The union resulted in
the birth of eleven children; Granville,
William, George, Milton, Sally, Sherman, Grant, Effie, Wilburn, and two unnamed
children who died at birth. The
names of the children, Grant and Sherman, certainly reflect Samuel’s
sentiments during the civil war. |