06/16/2026
Guy C. Allen, 83 Dies Sunday
Oberlin Herald - June 14, 1956
Guy C. Allen, one of Decatur County’s senior citizens, died at the Decatur County Hospital Sunday morning at the age of 83.
From a pioneer family and a resident of this county for 60 of his 83 years, Allen was recognized as an outstanding authority on this area’s history. Often a public servant and still active in business right up to a few days before his death, Guy Allen had served as a sort of community elder statesman in his later years.
Allen grew up with Decatur County, coming here in 1874 as a two-year-old, attended the county’s first log school house and first Sunday school.
In his teens, he was a stenographer for the United State Land Office in Oberlin and later managed and clerked for local retail houses besides farming, auditing for a local investment company, serving as register of deeds and police judge, and in his recent years, abstracting, selling insurance, and acting as this community’s representative for the State Motor Vehicle Department.
Born in Brodhead, Wisconsin in 1872, Guy Allen came to Kansas with his mother and brothers and sisters in May 1874. His father, Captain Justin W. Allen, had preceded his family to Kansas to homestead a claim of 160 acres in northeast Decatur County.
Captain Allen, who traced his Scotch-Irish-English lineage back to Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen, had served in the Union forces in the Civil War and participated in Sherman’s march to the sea.
He was this county’s first merchant, first postmaster, and Oberlin’s first mayor.
Guy Allen’s mother, Harriet Witter Allen, was from Wisconsin and after she came to this county served as the area’s only nurse.
One of seven still alive 75 years after Kansas’ last Indian raid here September 30, 1878, Guy Allen frequently recalled his mother’s role in attending the injured after the massacre.
Guy’s brother Oberlin Earl was the first white child born in Decatur County.
After attendance at public schools here and business college in Madison, Wisconsin, Allen worked for the Land Office here. In 1893, he went to Colorado City, Colorado, first in business, and later as a public official.
In the middle of the gold rush, his health failed, and Allen went to Baltimore, Maryland. Later he was in San Bernardino, California, working for the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad. Seriously injured there, he later returned to Baltimore and again to Colorado.
His health had returned sufficiently by that time that he won a five-mile roller skate race in Colorado Springs in 1903. After learning the steamfitting trade with a Colorado Steel corporation, he returned to Oberlin to manage a dry goods firm.
After working for Campbell, Dean and Wilbur, he farmed southwest of Oberlin for six years before going to a Kansas City, Missouri, brokerage firm.
Guy Allen returned to Oberlin in 1923. In 1927, he was elected Register of Deeds and served two terms. He was police judge through the 1930s.
Allen had been a member of the Presbyterian Church for many years. He helped organize the Lions Club after World War II.
He is survived by his wife, Mabel Allen, a daughter Louetta Wine, and a son Guy Clark Allen, both of Miami, Florida, a stepdaughter Elma Ashley of Selden, a stepson, Phyll Cramer, Oberlin, eight grandchildren and a host of friends.
He was preceded in death by his parents, his first wife, Agnes Handyside Allen, who died in 1900; a daughter, Edith Blanche, who died in 1918 at the age of 22; his brothers Arthur W. and Oberlin Earl Allen, and a sister Edith Uvary.
