author
Stanton P. Allen
1849–1901
A teenage Union cavalryman turned his Civil War service into vivid memoirs that preserve the feel of camp life, marches, and battle. Later in life, he also worked in journalism and the Methodist ministry, giving his writing a grounded, firsthand voice.
1 Audiobook
A Boy Trooper with Sheridan
by Stanton P. Allen
About the author
Born in 1849 in Petersburgh, New York, Stanton P. Allen served in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry during the Civil War while still very young. Later accounts of his life note that he enlisted as a teenager, and his wartime experience became the foundation for the historical writing he is remembered for today.
Allen was associated with local newspapers including The Whig and the Troy Daily Times. A University of Michigan finding aid also records that his scrapbook preserved material connected to a recurring newspaper column, Down in Dixie, in which he looked back on his army service.
He is best known as the author of A Boy Trooper with Sheridan, a memoir of cavalry life in the final years of the war. Late in life he entered the Methodist ministry, and he died in 1901.