John Allen (100)

John Allen (March 1739–2 February 1778) was a public official and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1768. Born in Philadelphia, the eldest son of Chief Justice (and APS member) William Allen, he enrolled in the College of Philadelphia. But rather than continue his studies, he then traveled abroad with his kinsman and APS member Joseph Shippen, Jr., and the artist Benjamin West, visiting Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and England. Upon his return to Philadelphia in 1762, Allen was elected to the Common Council. He visited England again in 1766 and 1771 and frequently traveled elsewhere on business; these absences forced him to turn down a number of positions on charitable boards. Despite some gestures of support for the colonial cause early on in the Revolutionary War, Allen never condoned separation from Britain. In the mid-1770s, he moved to New Jersey, where he was elected to the Provincial Congress in 1776, but his increasingly unpopular aversion to independence ultimately led him to abandon his seat. Under the protection of the British army he fled to New York late in 1776 but returned to Philadelphia during the British occupation a year later. He died there in 1778. In addition to his father, his brothers Andrew and James Allen, uncle James Hamilton, and brother-in-law John Penn were also APS members. (PI)