Stanton P. Allen

Born in New York in 1849, Stanton P. Allen served in the Civil War while still very young, joining the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry. Later accounts of his life describe him as a veteran who took part in major campaigns and eventually drew on those experiences in his writing.

Allen became a newspaper man in Troy, New York, and is linked with The Whig and The Troy Times. A University of Michigan finding aid for his scrapbook says it preserves clippings, maps, drawings, and material connected to his recurring newspaper column Down in Dixie, in which he retold his wartime experiences.

He also entered the Methodist ministry in the 1890s. Among the works associated with him are A Boy Trooper with Sheridan, Down in Dixie, and A Summer Revival and What Brought It About—books that suggest both sides of his life: the soldier who remembered the war vividly and the minister who wrote about faith and revival. He died in 1901.