Allen Park Dedication Ceremony
Allen Park, Jamestown, NY

  Sunday, August 2, 1981

   Today we look to the past and credit the foresight of the woman who donated this park to the city of Jamestown. Virginia Mahon Allen witnessed the development and the vanishing of open land in this city . She had seen the original Allen farmland filled with factories, small businesses, and homes. She became alarmed that future generations may not experience open spaces in this rapidly growing industrial society.

    In the summer of 1908, she signed an indenture that declared "that these premises shall forever be known as Allen Park and ... will neither be used or permitted to be used for any purpose whatsoever except park purposes and that the same shall be forever properly maintained" (Allen Park Deed, 1908).

    We remember the Allens today not because they existed in the past, but because their actions framed the future. They did not accept anything as they found it, and looked for better ways to do everything. They actively engaged in improving the environment, first by development, then by preservation. They took many risks and sometimes the risks were devastating (I grew up as poor as the early Allens during the depression).

    As I looked into the past in preparing for this wonderful celebration Delores Thompson, Mayor Carlson, Bobby Thompson, and Commissioner Dietrich have planned, I gained some new insights about the Allens.

    I learned that they had a pattern of taking charge of their lives and invented their own futures. I discovered that the Allens  were indeed "futurists". According to Leland Kaiser (Director of Health Education at the University of Colorado), a futurist takes the responsibility to create an array of possible actions today to frame the future, tomorrow.

    I also recognized that I knew very little about the Allen women. I had heard the stories of Elisha Allen, the pioneer settler; Col. Allen, the entrepreneur and politician; and my own father's political and business career. I did not realize that Elisha Allen was only seven when his soldier father was killed by a British prisoner in Boston and his mother Miriam took her six young children back home to Vermont to raise them in a more nurturing environment as a single parent. I learned also that Elisha died and left his widow with five young children, the oldest was Augustus who was 17. Because women could not be legal guardians or run business in 1830, Augustus had a legal guardian to supervise his managing the business, but Juliette managed the children and the business for nine years.   

    I was reminded that Augustus' wife Margaret Cook Allen was a major advisor and spiritual support to Horace Greeley (Stoddard, 1946) who ran for President against President Grant in 1872. In addition, I was reminded that the Virginia Allen who gave this park land and who was married to Col. Allen's son, Alfred, was widowed at 23 when her two sons, my father Augustus was 3, and his brother was less than one.

    Only Virginia Allen is honored on this plaque, but I want to recognize the other Allen women as futurists also.

    I want to take a few moments now to present a more vivid and human picture of how some of the Allens tried to shape their environment and future.

    Elisha arrived as a young trader in the frontier town of Jamestown and settled in 1816. He bought property to farm and to log. He developed a public house and mercantile business to accommodate new settlers in the future. And he started a woolen mill and Alcapa [Alpaca] works to clothe the settlers. He also organized the first "rent a horse and/or wagon" business on West Second and Main Street. He also grazed his cows there.

    One day, Sam Barrett tripped on a wagon part and soiled himself in this untidy environment. Barrett became so enraged he returned that night and pushed the wagon over the embankment and it disappeared in the mire. Weeks later, Barrett came over to rent a wagon. Elisha assured him that he believed in forgiveness of neighbors and said he could borrow a wagon - the one at the bottom of the embankment in the mire. Justice was swift in the frontier.

    Elisha continued in the transportation business when he invented a "horse boat", a scow that transported passengers and freight from Jamestown to Mayville "semi-occasionally" a year. This wide scow had passenger cabins on one side and eight horse stalls on the other, two side paddle wheels on each side and a large wheel in the middle which connected the paddle shafts. Four horses at a time pushed the wheel. Elisha's oldest son, Augustus then 12, commanded the boat. But Elisha's hope for the future was a complete failure. The horses could not stand at the wheel for more than four hours. Nor could the passengers stand on deck. And with a favorable wind, the horse boat took 10 hours to reach Mayville and up to two weeks round trip if the winds weren't favorable.

    This boat could not compete for mail, freight, and passengers with faster sail and steam boats.

    Elisha's son Augustus continued his interest in trying to find a better way to get from one place to another. He built the first "piece of thorough road" in the area from his farm on the south side to town. As he filled an area with gravel, logs, and plank, "his older fellow citizens looked on with amazement and grumbling, but "Gust" kept to work and gave them but little satisfaction". Later, the road was praised because it "has needed nothing more than ordinary repairs for 45 years. Augustus was rated for doing anything he undertook thoroughly and well".  (Hazeltine,1887)

    It is no wonder that Augustus was interested in transportation because he would ride logs rafted together down the Chadakoin to the Monongahela and Allegheny to Pittsburgh and walk back to Jamestown. This experience was said to contribute to his interest and success in bringing the Erie Railroad to Jamestown in the 1850's.

    Later, Augustus, now referred to as Col. Allen was valued as someone who could plan the future. A Jamestown paper (1875) reported at the time of his death that "no project looking to the advancement of our city was ever broached without submitting it to the careful scrutiny of Col. Allen.

    Another transportation venture involving Mayville occurred in 1911 when my father, Augustus, the grandson of Col. Augustus Allen attempted to shape the future of mail delivery. My father was postmaster and wanted to speed up the mail system. He flew the second air-mail run in the country: from Jamestown to Mayville. He and the pilot rode unprotected in seats on one of the two wings of the primitive plane. The system was not deemed profitable and was not developed. But unlike the horse-boat, air-mail caught on, however unprofitable.

    Thank you for sharing the past today with the Allen and Hart family. However, what is more important, is for all of us to take an active stance in inventing our own futures. To ask what can I do better. How can I develop our resources : our women, our men, and our land without jeopardizing a nurturing and safe environment.

    Let us invent the future, not prevent it.

    We can begin by developing a vigilance to preserve parts of our land so that there will be "Allen Parks" for all our children in the future.

Cynthia Allen Hart [Signed by]
[Reference Notebook]

10/31/2003