Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023
Jane Dillard was born on March 8, 1809, in Virginia, daughter of James Madison Dillard, Sr. (1777-1852) and Jane Elizabeth English (1781-1814).
Jane’s father was born in Culpeper County, Virginia in 1777. He had 16 children by two wives, Jane Elizabeth English and Cynthia Ann Haywood Dillard (1800-1872). James moved west from Culpeper County to the area around Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky about 1810 with his in-laws, Robert Hamilton English (1757-1826) and Sarah Jane Smith Bellows English (1761-1826) and family.
Jane’s grandfather, William Dillard, was born in 1753 in Culpeper County, and her grandmother was Mary Sarah Norman Dillard (1758-1815). William was a Revolutionary War solder. He enlisted in the Virginia Continental Army at Chesterfield Courthouse September 20, 1780, and subsequently, on September 8, 1781, he was killed in the Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina. That battle was the last major engagement of the war in the Carolinas; both sides claimed victory. William’s brother, Capt. James Dillard, had moved to Laurens County, South Carolina at age 17. He served throughout the Revolutionary War under generals Sumpter and Greene and was with Gen. Sumpter at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, where his brother was killed. Jane Dillard and John Boswell Allen came from Spencer County, Kentucky to Boone County, Indiana.
Jane Dillard married John Allen on November 18, 1829, in Elizabethtown, Hardin County, Kentucky. According to David H. Eggler in an article, “John Boswell Allen and Jane Dillard Allen: Kentucky to Indiana to Shakopee, Minnesota” on September 10, 2019, the record reads, “Allen, John B., and Jane Dillard. Surety James Dillard, girl’s father, who consented in person. Man of age. 18 Nov 1829. C. Lovelace [minister].”
John Boswell Allen was born on February 24, 1806, in Shelby County, Kentucky. His parents were John Allen, Sr. (1769-1837) and Elizabeth Boswell Allen (1768-1820).
John Spencer was the husband of Priscilla Allen and then Nancy Allen, and therefore the brother-in-law of John Boswell Allen. John, his brother George H. Spencer, and his sons John Bruce Spencer and Spier Spencer were all prominent figures in the early history of Minnesota and Shakopee. One article wrote about Spier Spencer: “He was born in Spencer County, Kentucky, January 22, 1827, his father being a prominent slave owner. He lived there until age 14, when his father sold his slaves and moved to Boone County, Indiana, where he remained for eight years.” That relocation, in 1841, was after the move by John Allen. It is conceivable that John Allen, like John Spencer, held slaves in Kentucky before relocating to Boone County, Indiana.
Jane and John moved to Shakopee in 1853. At that time, the place was called Shakapee City, Minnesota Territory, which was the name from 1853-1855. The place was first called Tínṫa Otuŋwe, then Prairie des Français, then in 1851 it was called Holmes Landing, then Sha K’ Pay, Minnesota Territory until the Allens arrived at the territory of Shakapee City. It was not until 1857 that the place was called Shakopee, Minnesota.
Only five white families lived in Shakopee, called Holmes Landing in 1851 and twenty white persons in 1852, which was called Sha K’ Pay. Of course, that doesn’t include the six hundred Dakota Indians who had been living here for more than two hundred years. More settler-colonists arrived in 1853 when many of the Dakota were forced to be removed to the Upper Sioux Agency, including the John and Jane Boswell Allen family, according to A 1891 Sketch of Shakopee, Minn: Historical and Industrial by William Hinds.
According to the History of the Minnesota Valley, 1882, John and Jane “kept a boarding-house in what was called the Pennsylvania House. Luther M. Brown describes this house as having two rooms, one above and one below. The lower room had a log fireplace, while the upper one had only the rafters above and one window with five lights of glass. Nevertheless this hotel could accommodate, as it appears, fifteen or more persons, regardless of sex.”
According to David Eggler, John B. Allen subsequently returned to farming. On February 13, 1854, he paid $1500 for eighty acres of government land on the Shakopee-Le Sueur road three miles from Shakopee plus a timbered tract adjacent to Samuel and Andrew Dooley (Scott County Deeds). He bought additional land in 1855.
“On the 1880 plat map his farm was the entire 165 acres of W ½ E ½ section 15, T115 N R23W in the Town of Jackson. He built the first house in Jackson. In later years, while living in Jackson, John and Jane kept Flora, Cora Ann, and Frank Weiser, children of their daughter Mary Elizabeth Allen Weiser, who had died in 1865, and Frances and Martha May Koons, children of their daughter Henrietta Allen Koons, who also died in 1865,” said David H. Eggler in the article “John Boswell Allen and Jane Dillard Allen: Kentucky to Indiana to Shakopee, Minnesota.:
Jane and John had nine children: Henrietta, Lucy Jane, Martha, Mary Elizabeth, Ann Elizabeth, John Alfred, James Peter, Harrison, and Marcena.
Jane Dillard Allen died on September 5, 1885, in Shakopee, and was buried at Valley Cemetery. Eight years later, her husband, John Boswell Allen died.
The funeral of John B. Allen took place on Tuesday, December 26, from the residence of Spier Spencer, according to the Scott County Argus, December 28, 1893. The tombstone inscription says, “Dearest Father we must lay thee In the peaceful grave’s embrace But thy memory will be cherished Till we see thy heavenly face.”
John B. Allen and Jane Dillard Allen are buried in Lot 392, the Allen plot, in Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.
Bibliography
Eggler, David H. “John Boswell Allen and Jane Dillard Allen: Kentucky to Indiana to Shakopee, Minnesota.” Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association, 10 Sept. 2019. http://www.bellefontearts.org/Eggler_genealogy/Allen_genealogy.pdf.
Hinds, William. A 1891 Sketch of Shakopee, Minn: Historical and Industrial, 1891.
Neill, Edward D. and Charles S. Bryant. History of the Minnesota Valley, 1882.
Scott County Argus, 28 Dec. 1893.