John B. Allen (1845-1903) was a lawyer, a delegate from the Washington Territory, and the first United States Senator for Washington State. An Indiana native, he had settled in Washington Territory by 1870. From 1875 to 1885, Allen served as the United States Attorney for the Territory. He was elected as the Republican delegate to Congress for the Washington Territory in 1889, and then as a United States Senator later that year. He served in the Senate until 1893, when the Washington legislature failed to elect a Senator. Allen moved to Seattle, where he returned to practicing law with the firm, Struve, Allen, Hughes & McMicken. His youngest son, George Hiram Allen (1879-1948) set out to Dawson, Alaska as part of the 1897 gold rush. In the spring of 1901, George H. Allen was convicted of an assault and robbery in Nome, Alaska. Up until the time of his sudden death, John B. Allen had worked to secure his son a new trial. George H. Allen ultimately was acquitted at a second trial in U.S. District Court in Alaska in 1903; he appears to have gone on to become a lawyer as well. His mother, Mrs. John B. Allen (the former Matilda Cecilia Bateman), herself ran as a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1916, mainly on a platform of women's suffrage.
The John Beard Allen correspondence regarding court case consisSet of six unsigned, carbon copies of letters concerning the arrest and prosecution of Allen's son, George H. Allen, for a robbery he allegedly committed in Nome, Alaska. The single 1902 letter from John B. Beard deals with his efforts to get a new trial for his son. The five other letters were written in May 1903 (after the untimely death of Allen in January 1903) by an unidentified party to Allen's widow, as well as to the Solicitor General of the United States, Henry M. Hoyt, and the United States Attorney General, Philander C. Knox; one of these letters contains a synopsis of the testimony delivered by an unreliable witness to the crime.
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