John Mills ALLEN, Congress, MS (1846-1917)

ALLEN John Mills , a Representative from Mississippi; born in Tishomingo County, Miss., July 8, 1846; attended the common schools; during the Civil War enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army and served throughout the war; attended the law school of Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tenn., and was graduated from the law department of the University of Mississippi in 1870; was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Tupelo, Lee County, Miss.; district attorney for the first judicial district of Mississippi 1875-1879; elected as a Democrat to the Forty-ninth and to the seven succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1885-March 3, 1901); chairman, Committee of Expenditures in the Department of Justice (Fifty-second Congress), Committee on Levees and Improvements of the Mississippi River (Fifty-third Congress); declined to be a candidate for reelection in 1900 to the Fifty-seventh Congress; appointed in March 1901 a United States commissioner to the St. Louis Exposition of 1904; resumed the practice of law in Tupelo, Miss., and died there October 30, 1917; interment in Glenwood Cemetery.

Bibliography

Faries, Clyde J. ``The Rhetoric of Private John Allen.'' Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, 1965; Gentry, Claude. Private John Allen: Gentleman, Statesman, Sage, Prophet. Baldwyn, Miss: The author, 1951.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present