52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 34 – August 19-25, 2024
Member of the Club
As I began to search for information about clubs and organizations, I found that many of my ancestors participated in or were members of clubs or societies. This blog post is about the history of three organizations and about one of my lesser-known collateral ancestors who was a member of groups or organizations.
Beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century many of our ancestors joined clubs or organizations. Among other reasons, memberships can open doors to meeting folks who share similar interests and create an environment where one can connect with others, make new friends, become part of something bigger than yourself, and build strong relationships. But what about joining and participating in clubs or organizations for children and young people? In the early 20th century, there were not nearly as many opportunities for youngsters as there were for adults. Children usually attended school then came home to assist in the household or on the farm. Some children, especially in the late 19th century, worked for others on farms or in the mines.
Changing child labor laws and compulsory school attendance bean to change the lives of young people, especially boys. Soon organizations such as the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and the YMCA began to spring up adding a new dimension to the lives of children.
John Andrew Allen was my paternal grand uncle, a mysterious member of the Allen family, the youngest brother of my paternal grandfather, Joseph Smith Allen. He was born on 14 February 1899 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the youngest child of Florence Brenneman Smith Allen and John Smith Allen. His story has been of interest to me as I never knew much about him. My father never mentioned him, and I only learned about from him from my mother who told me that he had moved “to somewhere in the southern United States” and that my father may have a few first cousins that he never met. And yes, that was the case. I am not really sure why that happened. The only reason that I can surmise is that he was younger than my grandfather and my other grand uncle and that possibly he had experienced a different childhood than either of them.
The only familial information that I had learned about him came from my Aunt Flo, who was my main source of Allen family genealogy.
He went by his middle name, Andrew, following in the tradition of his grandfather and his father, of commonly using his middle name. From one of the records that I have discovered he attended and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He was the first of the Allens to have graduated from a university. Neither his brother, Joseph, nor his brother, Reginald, had graduated from college although they both went on to have prosperous careers.
He seemed to have had a membership at the YMCA in Williamsport in 1912. I found an interesting article from the Daily Gazette and Bulletin of 12 October 1912 entitled “Two Hundred Boys Attend Banquet.” It was the second annual dinner given at the YMCA in Williamsport, Pennsylvania and was prepared and served by the Ladies Auxiliary. The Ladies Auxiliary members were mothers and sisters of the youngsters. Perhaps his mother, Florence, was one of those mothers.
The dinner was combined with "Opening Day" of the association and was served on the beautifully decorated third floor in the big hall in the city of Williamsport. The menu included “fried oysters and all the good things which accompany them.” The banquet committee had been expecting 175 boys, but 200 boys showed up! The boys voted it as "one of the greatest things they have attended." Among the attendees was a thirteen year old boy named J. Andrew Allen. Williamsport in 1910 was a town of about 31,000 people as opposed to the 2020 population which was about 27,700 residents, and once purportedly had more millionaires per capital than anywhere else in the world due to the lumbering industry and the railroads.
The first YMCA was conceived in London in 1844 when a farmer turned department store worker, and eleven friends gathered to organize the first Young Men’s Christian Association, a refuge for young men seeking escape from the hazards of the streets. In 1844, industrialized London was place of great turmoil and despair. For the young men who migrated to the city from rural areas to find jobs, London offered a bleak landscape of tenement housing and dangerous influences.
Years later, retired sea captain Thomas Valentine Sullivan, working as a marine missionary, noticed a similar need to create a safe “home away from home” for sailors and merchants. Inspired by the stories of the Y in England, he led the formation of the U.S. YMCA at the Old South Church in Boston on29 December 1851.
In 1853 in Washington, D.C., the first YMCA for African Americans was founded by Anthony Bowen, who had been a freed formerly enslaved person. San Francisco, in 1875, followed their lead by serving Asian communities and the city’s expanding Chinese population, including the establishment of the first Japanese YMCA in 1917. By 1879 the first YMCA serving U.S. Native Americans was founded in 1879 by Thomas Wakeman, a Dakota Indian, in Flandreau, South Dakota.
Early in Y history, women’s auxiliaries were instrumental in raising funds for the YMCA. In 1886, the first known female YMCA employee, Ellen Brown, was hired, and during WWI, 5,145 women served under the YMCA banner. However, though the support of women was of vital importance to the success of the YMCA, they have not always been able to participate fully as a member. The Brooklyn YMCA is the first Y known to work with women which began as early as 1859. However, it was not until 1978 that gender discrimination was banned outright by the YMCA.
Interestingly, a YMCA teacher, James Naismith, a physical education teacher, invented the game of basketball as an indoor game by hanging peach baskets to the bottom of the second level running track and aiming a ball to land in the basket.
The YMCA organization went on to create many sports programs, community organizations, raise millions of dollars, become an advocate for civil rights, and inspire positive impact on youth development.
Andrew was not only a YMCA member but during his time as a student at the University Pennsylvania he was member of the Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity that still exists to this day.
There are two versions of the story about the founding of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity, but both involve one man who wanted to create a lifetime of true brotherhood– Warren Albert Cole.
The first, resulting from an agreement in late 1912 between Warren Cole in Boston and Albert Cross in Philadelphia, holds that on November 2, 1909, Warren A. Cole, Percival C. Morse, and Clyde K. Nichols met at 22 Joy St., Boston, and swore allegiance to the new fraternity. The meeting had been called, by whom it is not recorded, for the purpose of considering the reorganization of the Cosmopolitan Law Club, a society of law students at Boston University, of which Cole was a member, into the Greek letter society.
The name Lambda Chi Alpha is thought to have been used from the beginning. The Greek letter name was not used in the Alpha Zeta minutes until April 27, 1910, however, and, as far as is known, this was the first time it was recorded.
The second version of results from interviews with Cole and other early members in later years, and further investigation is as follows. When Cole entered Boston University in the fall of 1909, his first residence lay too far from the law school on Beacon Hill, so he and a varied group of youngsters rented a room at Pemberton Square, which they used for study between classes or work. This loosely held group became known as the Tombs or Cosmopolitan Club but did not lead directly to the formation of Lambda Chi Alpha.
Before the end of 1909, Cole moved to 22 Joy St., where he shared an apartment with James C. McDonald and Charles W. Proctor, both of whom later joined the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Cole, however, was determined to start his own fraternity. In the fall of 1911, he moved to 35 Hancock St., rooming with Ralph S. Miles and Harold W. Bridge. On November 15, 1911, the constitution of the new fraternity, largely derived from Gamma Eta Gamma’s, was signed by Cole, Miles, Bridge, and Percival C. Morse – the four founders.
Over the next month, wonderful, yet mysterious, events of great significance occurred, and a new fraternity was born with the appearance of our first badge and our first coat of arms, known as the Gamma Plate. Each of the four founders bought a badge. They issued themselves a charter for Alpha Zeta, back-dating it to November 15, 1911.
From this point on, Lambda Chi Alpha progressed at an incredibly rapid rate. Cole soon wrote the original Initiation Ritual, and within one-year chapters at the Massachusetts Agricultural College (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), the University of Pennsylvania (of which Andrew was a member), and Pennsylvania State University were installed. Titles of national officers, such as Supreme Eminent Archon, were most likely borrowed from Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and the overall design of our first coat of arms may have been inspired by the seal of McDonald’s prep school, the Worcester Academy.
Times changed quickly and in 1917 the United States became involved in WW I. Andrew, still a 19-year-old college student, was inducted into the U.S. Army Student Army Training Corp (SATC). These college students were formally enlisted in the U.S. Army but remained at their college or university. The Student Army Training Corps (SATC) represented a nationwide program initiated by the War Department’s Committee on Education and Special Training. Begun in April 1918, the program was terminated on 19 December 1918.
Training detachments were established at 157 college campuses throughout the country. The program was designed to train draftees in a variety of trades needed for the war effort. Inducted as privates in the regular army and subject to military discipline, the student soldiers lived in barracks, ate in mess halls, and were accorded a monthly allowance of $30, in addition to having their tuition paid. Students received a total of 42 hours of essential and allied subjects, while also performing military drill for 11 hours per week. Under the SATC program, men could continue in college until the completion of their courses and then enter the armed services as commissioned officers. Male students were sworn into the army and provided with tuition, subsistence, $30 per month, and uniforms. The Hill became a military camp, with guards surrounding the premises. Training was given for the infantry, artillery or machine gunnery, quartermaster, engineer, signal, and chemical corps. Upon completion of the university training, the men were to go to an officers’ training school. The first classes arrived on October 1, 1918, and were little more than well-organized when the armistice was signed on November 11. Following the armistice, students could shift from the SATC without penalty or loss of time to regular curricula. All men were mustered out before December 21, 1918.
It is interesting to note that as Andrew aged, he also became a Masonic member as were many of the Allen ancestors.
Andrew graduated form the University of Pennsylvania and became an employee of the C.P. Telephone Company in Charleston, West Virginia. He married Gladys Frederick Rahn in Washington, D.C. in October of 1924, at the North Capitol Methodist Episcopal Church and created a family of three children, two boys, John Andrew Allen, Jr. , b. 1928. d. 2005, Robert Rahn Allen, b. 1931, d. 1980, and one girl, Mary Ann Allen b. 1934. But unfortunately, in December of 1934, at the age of 32, after the birth of their daughter, Mary Ann, Gladys died from complications of childbirth.
Andrew persevered as a single father until May of 1936 when he married Marian Estella Roming Smallwood. Marian became stepmother to John, Rahn, and Mary Ann. Marian and Andrew had two biological children, George Smallwood Allen, b. 1940, d. 2005, and Diane Rebecca Romig Allen, b. 1943, d. 2002.
By the time of his marriage to Marian, Andrew had all but stopped his familial communication with his Allen family. Reason unknown. This reason is one of the goals in my research of my maternal grand uncle. My father, his nephew, never met him.
In 1941 Andrew built a small home for his family on Forest Circle in South Charleston, Kanawha County, West Virginia. He lived there with Marian until his death in February of 1956. Marian lived until 1991.
Recently through the power of DNA I have discovered a new-to-me second cousin, Andrew’s grandson. My hope is that I may learn about Andrew through my new DNA cousin.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post I had many ancestors who were members of organizations and clubs. I chose John Andrew Allen, Sr. as the focal point of this post in the hopes that I may learn more about his life and his descendants.
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