William Allen (congressman)

William Allen (August 13, 1827 – July 6, 1881) was a United States Representative from Ohio during the early part of the American Civil War.

Allen was born near Hamilton, Ohio, where he attended the public schools. As a young man, he taught school, then studied law. Allen was admitted to the bar in 1849 and commenced practice in Greenville, Ohio, in 1850. He was the prosecuting attorney of Darke County from 1850 until 1854.

Allen was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses (March 4, 1859 – March 3, 1863), where he served as chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Interior (Thirty-seventh Congress). He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1862 and resumed the practice of law. He became affiliated with the Republican Party at the close of the Civil War and was appointed judge of the Court of Common Pleas of the second judicial district in 1865. He declined the Republican nomination for election to the Forty-sixth Congress in 1878 because of failing health. He was interested in banking until his death in Greenville, Ohio, in 1881. He was buried in Greenville Cemetery.

External links

• United States Congress. "William Allen (id: A000149)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. 

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio's 4th congressional district
Caldwell Herrick Chambers Vance Thomas Corwin Morrow Vance Canby Moses Bledso Corwin Stanton Nichols Allen McKinney Lawrence McKinney Gunckel McMahon Keifer Shultz Le Fevre Anderson Yoder Gantz Layton Marshall Gordon Garber Tou Velle Goeke Russell Welty Cable Fitzgerald Cable Kloeb Albaugh Jones McCulloch Guyer Oxley Jordan