Bio of ALLEN, Harry (b.1840), Wright Co., MN
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268   HISTORY OF WRIGHT COUNTY 

  Harry Allen, soldier, traveler and guide, is one of the notable 
figures in Annandale life. He has done service on the bloody battlefields 
of two continents, and has had experiences such as seldom fall to the lot 
of man. He was born in Onondaga, N. Y., January 10, 1840, son of John and 
Sarah Allen. John Allen was a fisherman on the Great Lakes, and from the 
time he was able to handle a net until he was sixteen years old, Harry 
Allen worked with him. Then he started out for himself as a sailor on 
the Great Lakes. He was thus engaged when the Civil war broke out. He 
first enlisted in the First Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, and when his 
term there had expired, in the Seventeenth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. 
Among the engagements in which he participated may be mentioned the 
battles of Corinth, Champion Hills, Vicksburg, Trinity, Big Shanty, 
Kenesaw Mountain, Atlanta (July 21, 24 and 28), Jonesboro, Lovejoy 
Station, Mllidgeville, Savannah, Columbia, Charleston, Kingston, 
Bentonville and Raleigh. He was wounded in the left leg at the Round-
Away Bayou, Louiriana; and at Atlanta he was wounded in the left leg 
and the left arm, and lost his left eye. In 1865 he again became a 
sailor on the Great Lakes. This occupation he followed until 1880, when 
he opened a repair shop in Chicago. It was in 1882 that he went to Egypt 
and enlisted in the English army for seven months under "Chinese" Gordon. 
The fact that he had been sent with the sick to Cairo saved him from being 
destroyed with his company at the battle of Khartoum. After his term of 
enlistment expired he again returned to Chicago and conducted a repair 
shop. In 1887 he came to St. Paul and found employment in the lumber 
woods in the northern part of the state. His residence in Wright county 
dates from 1896, since which time he has been a guide and a keeper of a 
resort. Mr. Allen was married in 1891 to Viola Lee, daughter of William 
and Betsy Lee, of Cokato, this county. Mrs. Allen died in 1902, leaving 
three children: Caroline, Benjamin and Harry.