William Allen
William Allen [1]
Allen, William (3), D.D.,
a Congregational minister and writer, son of Thomas Allen, was born at Pittsfield, Mass., Jan. 2, 1784. He graduated at Harvard College in 1802; and studied theology under the Rev. Dr. Pierce, of Brookline. He began preaching in Western New York in 1804; after some months he returned to Massachusetts, and was made a regent of Harvard and assistant librarian. In 1809 appeared the first edition of his American Biographical Dictionary, containing notices of some 700 Americans — the first work of the kind published in this country. The second edition of this Dictionary was published in 1832, and contained over 1800 names; and the third edition, published at Boston in 1857, contains about 7000 biographies. In 1810 he was ordained pastor of the Church in Pittsfield, as his father's successor. In 1817, when Dartmouth College was organized as a university, Dr. Allen was appointed president; but when the Supreme Court declared this organization illegal in 1819, he was compelled to retire; and in 1820 became president of Bowdoin College, Me., where he remained until 1839, when be retired to Northampton, Mass., and spent the remainder of his life in literary pursuits. He died July 16, 1868. He contributed largely to Worcester's and Webster's dictionaries; and published, among other works, Junius Unmasked: — Accounts of Shipwrecks : Psalms and Hymns (1835.: — Christian Sonnets (1860): — Poems of Nazareth and the Cross (1866): — Sacred Songs (1867).
