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BIOGRAPHIES
Source:
Biographical Memoirs
of
St. Clair County, Michigan
A Comprehensive Compendium of National Biography -
Memoirs of Eminent Men and Women in the United States,
whose Deeds of Valor or Works of Merit have Made their Names
Imperishable.
Illustrated
Embellished with Portraits of Many National Characters and
Well-Known Residents of St. Clair, Michigan
Published Logansport, Indiana:
B. F. Bowe, Publisher
1903
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DARIUS ALLEN was
born September 8, 1842, in Armada township, Macomb county,
Michigan, and is a son of Douglas and Phebe
(Conger) Allen, both natives of Dangersfield, New
York. Douglas Allen came to Michigan in 1836
and located in Armada township, Monroe county, which at that
time was a wilderness, the nearest market being Mt. Clemmens.
He died in 1850, leaving his family a piece of land of
forty-five acres, with only three acres cleared. He was a
Democrat and was an active, daring pioneer, one of the first
settlers in that section of the state. The maternal
grandfather of the subject was Jesse Conger, who came from New
York and settled in Michigan in an early day. Douglas
Allen raised a family of nine children: Sylvester,
Hezekiah, Alexander, Harriett, Jesse C,
Darius, Phoeba, Clarissa and Roswell. All had
common school education and have acquired good homes for
themselves and are a robust and hearty set of men and women.
In early life Darius Allen started out
for himself, at the same time assisting his mother and the
family all he could. He earned his first suit of clothes
by trapping beaver and other fur-bearing animals, and also
worked in lumber camps and assisted in clearing up their own
land. The first real estate he ever owned was a ten-acre
tract. He was married, in 1865, to Mary Jane
Stanlake, who died in 1896. She was a daughter of
Thomas Stanlake, one of the early pioneers and a
well-to-do farmer of Berlin township. Darius
Allen and wife settled on section 28, in Berlin township, on
forty acres of land, and he has added to this, from time to
time, until he now has six hundred acres of well improved land.
He has a family of five children: George, Elsie
Jane, Lula, Ina and Ethan. Mr.
Allen has always been known as a famous hunter. He
says, and others bear out his assertion, that the number of deer
that he has killed will run over the thousand mark, and he has
also killed dozens of bear and other game of all kinds.
Darius Allen has long been and is now one
of the leading citizens of Berlin township and St. Clair county,
and is enabled to trace his family lineage back to that of
Ethan Allen, of Ticonderoga fame. In his
farming operations he follows the system of mixed, or general
stock, farming, in which he has been eminently successful.
In the carrying on of work on his farm, he requires and oversees
the labor of twenty-five men and possesses the most complete
truck farm in St. Clair county. His crop of this year will
give an idea of the magnitude of his estate and his farming
operations: Of potatoes, he has out sixty-five acres; corn,
sixty acres; chickory, thirty acres; onions, thirty acres; sugar
beets, five acres; oats, ninety acres; wheat, twenty acres; and
peppermint, a hundred acres. He has also twenty-five acres
of clover and one hundred and fifty acres of timothy. He
favors a rotation of crops, and is an ideal stock raiser, having
five hundred Shropshire sheep and many registered Durham cattle.
He built a peppermint distillery in 1896, and produces nearly
ten thousand pounds of peppermint oil per year, finding in this
a profitable source of income.
Mr. Allen is a Democrat and is very
active in township and county politics. He has been
drainage commissioner and commissioner of highways, justice of
the peace, etc. He purchased the first gravel pit ever
opened in Berlin township, and had the contract for building and
fencing ten miles of the Pere Marquette Railroad. He also
furnished thirty thousand ties for the same road, has done other
extensive contract work and has been interested in several
lumber deals that involved large amounts. He is a man
among men, and a typical example of the sturdy, honest pioneer
class. He is the best type of a successful, self-made man
of the world. He commenced life, as so many of the young
men of our country do, with no capital save an ambition to
excel, backed by an energetic will and the brawn and muscle
which the coarse fare and hardy outdoor life gave and which was
the foundation for the future achievements of the descendants of
the pioneer fathers of our country.
Darius Allen is endowed with the mental
acumen which enables him to take advantage of the natural
tendencies of the times in which he lives and the circumstances
by which he is surrounded and to adopt that course which is
productive of best results. In all professions and in
every line of business the tendency of the age has been along
the line of concentration. Experience has demonstrated the
fact that in the profession of farming, the application of these
ideas is no less successful than in that of others; and the
successful, we may say the brilliant, results attained by Mr.
Allen are among the striking illustrations of the
accuracy of the theory. Starting in life with the
comparatively trifling amount of ten acres of land, he has added
to this by his industry and successful management, until now he
has six hundred or more acres of land in a high state of
cultivation. To his general and mixed system of stock
raising and cultivation of the staple cereals and grasses, he
has added the specialty of market-gardening, with the addition
of some products that are comparatively rare and from which he
is realizing good results financially.
Mr. Allen has at times during his life
also had charge of and has been engaged in contract work for
corporations and public works, which proves the bent of his
mind, his ability to grapple with problems of more than average
magnitude; and his disposition to engage in the larger concerns
of life. He has also in his busy life found time to devote
to his civic duties, being an active worker in his party, in
which his interest in the public affairs of his township and
county, with his ability and inclination for public service, has
been recognized by his selection to fill various township
offices and to act as delegate in numerous conventions of his
party. He is an intelligent and active citizen, fully
alive to all the topics of the day, and especially interested in
all questions which concern the interests of the community in
which he lives. He is a busy man of affairs, possessing
the respect and confidence of the public, and being in the prime
of life in regard to years, and sound in mental and physical
qualities, many years of future usefulness seem to be vouchsafed
to him
Source: Biographical Memoirs of St. Clair County, Michigan -
Published Logansport, Indiana: B. F. Bowe, Publisher - 1903 -
Page 267 |
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